Department of Nuclear Medicine

The Department of Nuclear Medicine was founded in 1982 as a separate academic department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center. It is one of the largest Nuclear Medicine departments in the United States, with extensive activities in patient care, research and teaching.

Unlike most nuclear medicine departments, which function as divisions of larger departments such as radiology or medicine, the department’s separate academic status gives it greater autonomy and has fostered an environment of growth and maturation even in this time of dwindling medical resources.

The department’s faculty plays an active role in national and international nuclear medicine. Members of the department have served as member and chairman of the American Board of Nuclear Medicine; as president and officers of the Society of Nuclear Medicine; on study sections of the National Institutes of Health and other research bodies.  They lecture on the use of nuclear medicine in patient diagnosis and therapy throughout the world. Faculty members have contributed more than 541 peer reviewed publications and written or edited more than 30 books for the general and nuclear medicine medical literature. Faculty members serve on numerous editorial boards and the chairman and vice-chairman are co-editors of the Seminars in Nuclear Medicine, one of the most widely cited journals in Nuclear Medicine.

The many research activities of the department members have contributed to the use of nuclear medicine in the study of kidney disease, cancer and immunoimaging, to name just a few examples. At the present time, the department has launched a major initiative in the use of PET/CT imaging in the differential diagnosis of cancer. PET/CT is one of the newest and most advanced nuclear medicine imaging techniques, and it promises to revolutionize the diagnosis of cancer.  A new facility “The M. Donald Blaufox Laboratory for Molecular Imaging” is devoted to animal models of human disease using a state of the art microPET scanner.

Members of the department have received numerous awards, both nationally and internationally, including: NIH Physician Scientist Training Award, Distinguished Education Award of the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Honorary Corresponding Member of the Gisselschaft fur Nuklearmedizin, Honorary Life Member of the Pan American Medical Association, Honorary Professor of Medicine of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, Peoples Republic of China, Sarabhai Memorial Oration Award Society of Nuclear Medicine, India, and the Berson-Yalow Award of the Greater New York Chapter of the Society of Nuclear Medicine And the Lifetime Achivement Award  at the International Society for Radionuclides in Nephrology.

M. Donald Blaufox MD PhD
Chairman

Department of Nuclear Medicine
Montefiore Medical Center
1695A Eastchester Road
Bronx, NY 10461
Tel: (718) 405-8450