What are the limitations of Children's (Pediatric) Nuclear Medicine?

Nuclear medicine procedures can be time consuming. It can take several hours to days for the radiotracer to accumulate in the body part of interest and imaging may take up to several hours to perform, though in some cases, newer equipment is available that can substantially shorten the procedure time.

The resolution of structures of the body with nuclear medicine may not be as high as with other imaging techniques, such as CT or MRI. However, nuclear medicine scans are more sensitive than other techniques for a variety of indications, and the functional information gained from nuclear medicine exams is often unobtainable by other imaging techniques.