Positron emission tomography, or PET, is a functional imaging technique that uses radioactive substances called radiotracers to visualize and measure changes in the body's metabolic processes. A radiopharmaceutical, a radioactive substance carried by a drug, is injected into the body, and as it undergoes beta decay it releases a positron; when that positron meets an electron the collision produces two gamma rays traveling in opposite directions, which detectors capture to reconstruct a three-dimensional image. PET scanners are used to help diagnose and manage cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders, and they are often combined with computed tomography hardware to form a single PET-CT scanner for one integrated imaging session. The source consulted for this entry does not name who developed PET or when, so that origin is recorded here as a gap rather than guessed.
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