Health committee  I think the answer is more PET. Right now we're at about 75% of the technetium that we had, say, a year ago. We're able to cope with that because we switched cardiac studies from technetium to thallium, so at 75% we're holding our own. Thallium is not as good as technetium. The

Health committee  Yes, PET can be mobile. It's an 18-wheeler, and they use it in the U.S. a lot right now. One state will have three or four PET cameras that move around to little places like Peterborough.

Health committee  I was going to say that PET is superior to SPECT for many things, like the diagnosis of cancer, so you're actually looking for a better test. So if we go the PET way, we actually are going towards a better test. Going back to TRIUMF and the photofission, that's research. That's

Health committee  I'm just going to come back on that. You're right. TRIUMF could help us establish cyclotrons to make PET tracers across Canada.

Health committee  We run longer hours, not 24/7. We work on weekends. A generator comes, and it's hot, and it decays. Typically, it comes on a Thursday or Friday, of all days, so that means on Saturday or Sunday the technicians work, and they don't usually do that. As Dr. Beanlands was saying, the

Health committee  I think you have to realize that there's going to be technetium during the shortage. It isn't zero; it's a reduction. Right now we're reduced to about 75%. We're okay, because we're using thallium, which is sparing some of the need. We'll go down to about 40%, or something in tha

Health committee  I'm Dr. Terry Ruddy, head of cardiology at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute and director of nuclear cardiology at that site. I'm also head of nuclear medicine at the Ottawa Hospital, so I look at business from both ends. In the cardiac world we're doing well. It's more o