EDITOR'S PAGE

Frances Neagley, CNMT, FSNMTS, Editor, JNMT

It is September and this is issue number three for the year. We have weathered a lot of changes since the beginning of the year, but things seem to be working rather smoothly now. I really like the fall season because it seems so refreshing after the hectic summer months. For SNM and SNMTS, September is the beginning of a new fiscal year, so it is time to renew your membership. I wouldn't want anyone to miss a single issue of JNMT.

The SNM Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, was a great success. A large number of papers and posters were submitted. The abstracts of the submissions that were accepted are included in this issue. Look them over to see new ideas and issues for our profession, and help me encourage some of these presenters to submit articles to JNMT.

At the Technologist Section business meeting, I presented the awards for the best articles published in the JNMT in 2006. These awards were chosen by the associate editors from the pool of submissions that had a technologist as the primary author. The list of these awardees can be found in the Technologist News section in this issue. We applaud these authors and commend them for their contributions to our profession.

Continuing our new invited commentaries section, Kathy Thomas presents a discussion of the many continuing education opportunities available through SNM and SNMTS. There really are so many ways to acquire continuing education credit hours throughout the year and at any time of the day or night that no technologist should have to endure any last minute panic attacks.

Also in this issue, is the first of the revisions to the procedure guidelines that we will be publishing as a recurring feature in JNMT. When the guidelines are first created and approved, they are published in our sister publication, The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. To keep up with changes in the profession and the standards of medical care, the Committee on Guidelines schedules reviews and revisions for these guidelines. We will be working with that committee to publish these revisions as they are approved.

Ann Steves, the JNMT reference editor, has decided to retire and this is her last issue. Ann has served in this capacity for four editors over two decades. She has reviewed every single submission to the JNMT and verified the references. In addition, Ann has been very active in SNMTS and is the author of the highly successful Review of Nuclear Medicine Technology and its companion book, Preparation for Examinations in Nuclear Medicine Technology. We wish her the best in her new leisure time and hope she gets to do all that traveling for fun that she is planning and so richly deserves.

We have an excellent selection of scientific and educational articles in this issue. The continuing education article on CT technology is the first of a three part series by Lee Goldman. Other articles concern collimators, gastrointestinal bleeding studies, radiopharmaceutical usage trends, parathyroid imaging, and a prototype lead pig. Hopefully, that will be a little something for everyone. As usual I welcome your comments.