EDITOR’S PAGE

Beth Harkness

There are 2 notable things about this issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine Technology. The first is the new cover design. With each editor, the JNMT has had a new cover selected by that editor. Thus, the JNMT has had many looks over the years, but this year we are changing the cover to more closely align its appearance with the appearance of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. The JNMT benefits greatly from this visual association with the JNM. I thank Dr. Heinrich Schelbert, the editor of JNM, for his collaboration on this new cover design.

The second notable item is a special feature that we are running on the following pages that highlights the editorial changes that have taken place in the JNMT over the past 3 decades. I hope you will enjoy this retrospective on how the journal has evolved and grown.

This month we are again publishing material on topics that are the state of the art in nuclear medicine and that should be of great interest to you. The CE article this month is about performing PET studies in children. The author, Dr. Barry Shulkin, is on the faculty at the University of Michigan and has extensive experience in performing PET studies on pediatric patients. A second article on PET imaging looks at the effectiveness of PET in evaluating infectious processes. This is a nice summary article and will hopefully help our readers understand the use of PET for this diagnostic group.

The last article that I would like to point out to you outlines the experience at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in evaluating their disaster preparedness program. It brings to light the concept that, in the case of a civil emergency, the nuclear medicine department plays a key role in evaluating patients coming into the emergency room. The experience reported by this group will be useful to all departments as they evaluate their disaster preparedness plans.

As I start my second and final term as editor of the JNMT, I want to thank all of the authors who have contributed to this journal. I hope that as you read this and future issues, you will think of how you can contribute to the knowledge base provided by the JNMT. Although I have highlighted PET and disaster preparedness in this editorial, there are many other things going on in nuclear medicine that are new and innovative. I hope that each of you will think about the things that you are doing in your clinic that are worthy of being published. Don’t get caught in the “We should have written that up—someone else beat us to it!” trap. If you are doing a new procedure or a tried and true procedure in a new way, write an article and submitting it to the JNMT. I look forward to receiving yours!