You can find a complete copy of the exam questions at the department's webpage here or you can download the attached file below!

Or just read them off the screen :D

Each candidate will answer 2 questions: 1 basic science (1 - 13) and 1 clinical (14-24). Please note that a complete answer to a clinical question should include 3 parts (a) radiopharmaceuticals and the principles of respective methods, (b) major clinical indications, and (c) interpretation (explanation of normal and abnormal results). Several additional questions can be asked by the examiner to assess candidate's knowledge.

01) Basic atomic and nuclear physics - organization of the atom, structure of nucleus, atomic number, mass number, nuclides, isobars, isotopes, isotones, isomers

02) Radioactive decay - alpha decay, beta-plus, beta-minus, gamma emission, units of activity (Becquerel, Curie), specific activity, kinetics of radioactive decay (general equation, half life, effective half life), statistics of radiation counting

03) Interaction of radiation with matter - ionization and excitation, charged particles (specific ionization, linear energy transfer, range, bremsstrahlung, annihilation), ionizing electromagnetic radiation (coherent scatter, photoelectric effect, compton interaction, pair production)

04) Radiation biology - cellular radiation biology (effect of radiation on cells, direct and indirect action of radiation, radiosensitivity of cells), repair of radiation injury, factors affecting cell response to radiation (dose rate, linear energy transfer, chemicals, stage of the cell cycle)

05) Radiation biology - short-term effects of total body irradiation (acute radiation syndrome, hemopoietic death, gastrointestinal death, central nervous system death), late effects of ionizing radiation (somatic effects, genetic effects, deterministic effects, stochastic effects), assessment of low dose / low dose rate effects on human health, hormesis

06) Radiation safety and protection - radiation exposure (quantities and units), radiation regulations, dose limits, principles of radiation protection, guidelines for personnel, radiation monitoring, internal radiation dosimetry, radiation dose - quantities and units, ALARA program

07) Production of radionuclides and radiopharmaceuticals - cyclotron-produced radionuclides, reactor-produced radionuclides, radionuclide generators, methods of radiolabeling, diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals, PET radiopharmaceuticals, quality control (radionuclide purity, radiochemical purity, chemical purity, sterility, apyrogenicity, toxicity), examples of most frequently used radiopharmaceuticals including their most important clinical applications

08) Nuclear medicine instrumentation - radiation detection and instrumentation, gas- filled detectors, scintiallation and semi-conductor counters, imaging devices, scintiallation or gamma cameras, multicrystal cameras, performance parameters of imaging devices (spatial resolution, sensitivity, uniformity, contrast, quality control), whole-body imaging, tomographic imaging devices, hybrid systems ET/CT

09) Computers and data processing in nuclear medicine - data acquisition (static, dynamic, whole-body, tomographic, list mode, matrix mode, gated mode), storage, processing, and display of image data, analogue and digital images, image filtering, image arithmetic, background subtraction, functional or parametric images, regions of interest, curve generation

10) Computers and data processing in nuclear medicine - tomographic image acquisition and reconstruction - simple backprojection, filtered backprojection, iterative techniques, quantitative imaging, image fusion or registration (correlative imaging), information storage and retrieval.

11) Statistical decision theory (sensitivity, specificity, diagnostic accuracy)

12) Principles of emission tomography - SPECT (single-photon emission tomography), radiopharmaceuticals, detection techniques, instruments, tomographic image reconstruction, whole-body imaging, spatial resolution, sensitivity, principles of clinical applications, examples of clinical applications

13) Principles of emission tomography - PET (positron emission tomography), radiopharmaceuticals, detection techniques, instruments, tomographic image reconstruction, whole-body imaging, spatial resolution, sensitivity, principles of clinical applications, examples of clinical applications

14) Cardiovascular system - radionuclide ventriculography (first pass, blood pool), myocardial perfusion imaging, infarct-avid imaging, metabolic imaging, new methods (neuronal imaging, atherosclerosis, thrombus imaging, apoptosis),

15) Central nervous system - cisternography, brain perfusion study - SPECT, clinical applications (acute stroke, brain trauma, focal epilepsy, dementia and depression, Parkinson's disease and parkinsonian syndromes, tumours, receptor systems, brain death)

16) Endocrine system - thyroid imaging, parathyroid imaging

17) Gastrointestinal system - gastric emtpying study, gastrointestinal bleeding study, gastroesophageal reflux, detection of Meckel's diverticulum, hepatobiliary study

18) Genitourinary system - static imaging (renal cortical scintigraphy), dynamic imaging (basis renogram), pharmacological intervention studies (diuretics, ACE inhibition), renal transplant scintigraphy, radionuclide cystography, scrotal (testicular) imaging

19) Pulmonary system and thromboembolism - lung ventilation scintigraphy, lung perfusion scintigraphy, venography

20) Skeletal system - bone scan (planar, SPECT), three (multiple) - phase bone imaging

21) Inflammatory processes - gallium scintigraphy, leukocyte scintigraphy, labelled antibodies, 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)

22) Tumour imaging - cancer staging, evaluation of treatment response, imaging of the sentinel nodes, a role of PET in cancer diagnosis

23) In-vivo non-imaging techniques - hematologic studies (total blood volume determination, plasma volume determination, red cell volume determination, plasma volume determination, red cell volume determination, red cell survival), vitamin B12
absorption (Schilling test), thyroid uptake, plasma clearance (glomerular filtration rate), laboratory methods (RIA, IRMA)

24) Radionuclide therapy - benign disease, thyroid carcinoma, myeloproliferative disease, MIBG therapy, palliative therapy of painful skeletal metastases, logoregional applications of radionuclide therapy, radioimmunotherapy, peptide
therapy, antisense radiotherapy, new radionuclides