A nuclear medicine patient/instrument scheduling model

The problem of scheduling patients and clinical instruments for each physician-requested Nuclear Medicine study, in a clinical environment, is resolved through the development of a computerized heuristic model. The study schedule was determined by minimizing such factors as elapsed instrument time, instrument idle time, and maximizing instrument utilization. The heuristic scheduling procedure was developed and evaluated for scheduling thirteen different Nuclear Medicine study types on a daily basis. The analysis showed that this heuristic can be utilized to provide a good basic schedule for use in Clinical Nuclear Medicine.