Nuclear Medicine Centre of Excellence
India has the scanners.
Now it has the readers.
Every PET centre hits one of two limits: it cannot run the scanner to the volume it planned, or it cannot read what it scans. The 5C Nuclear Medicine Centre of Excellence removes both, with credentialed nuclear medicine physicians led by Dr. Ajit Shinto, wherever the scanner is.
TL;DR
5C Network's Nuclear Medicine Centre of Excellence is a remote, distributed reporting service, headquartered in Bengaluru, that connects PET-CT and gamma camera scanners anywhere in India to a national panel of credentialed nuclear medicine physicians, led by Dr. Ajit Shinto, with structured reporting criteria and AI decision support built into the read. Every report is read and signed by a nuclear medicine physician. Reports follow PERCIST, Lugano, PSMA-RADS and SSTR-RADS, under a written minimum standard with peer review on complex cases, and come in three tiers: Standard, Premium (Detailed) and Advanced TBR (tumour-board-ready). It exists because India's 500+ PET-CT scanners depend on about 800 nuclear medicine physicians.
The gap we were built for
Reading PET-CT is licence-bound specialist work, so general radiologists cannot close this gap. The result is a scanner in a Tier-2 city running below capacity while oncologists send patients hours away.
India figures as stated in 5C Network's launch announcement, 23 September 2026.
Which limit is yours?
PET-CT demand in India is growing fast. Almost every centre we speak to is held back by one of two things.
You cannot run the scanner to the volume you planned
Throughput is capped by one physician’s calendar and working day. Uncap the reading and evenings, weekends, leave periods and peak days open up. Growth stops being a hiring decision.
You do not have the physician capacity to read what you scan
You cannot hire your way out of a national pool of about 800 physicians with a recruitment cycle of many months. Aggregated reading gives you capacity on demand, at a cost per study you can forecast.
What the Centre of Excellence reads
PET-CT and gamma camera, under one panel of nuclear medicine physicians
PET-CT
PET-CT reporting →- FDG PET-CTWhole-body oncology: staging, restaging, surveillance and response assessment
- PSMA PET-CTProstate cancer, reported with PSMA-RADS
- DOTA / SSTR PET-CTNeuroendocrine tumours, reported with SSTR-RADS
- Cardiac and brain PET-CTRegional FDG studies for the heart and brain
Gamma camera and SPECT
Gamma camera reporting →- Bone scanWhole-body skeletal scintigraphy
- Thyroid scanThyroid uptake and imaging
- Renal DTPA and DMSARenal function and cortical scarring
- HIDA scanHepatobiliary function
- Myocardial perfusionCardiac rest and stress studies
A report that is part of the care decision
A nuclear medicine report should tell the treating team how much disease there is, whether the therapy is working and what should change. PET-CT reports (FDG, SSTR and PSMA) come in three tiers, each including everything in the one before.
For imaging and diagnostic centres
Standard
- Whole-body PET-CT read and signed by a credentialed nuclear medicine physician
- Staging, restaging and follow-up studies
- An AI-generated TNM staging summary statement; on comparative studies, a response-criteria summary instead
For hospitals
Premium (Detailed)
- Everything in Standard
- TNM staging report with explanation, or on comparative studies a response-criteria report set out as a table against the prior scan
- Scan quality indicators: blood sugar at injection, injection time, scan time
- Reference-organ SUVmax for brain, mediastinal blood pool, liver and bladder, so the next scan is genuinely comparable
For cancer centres and tumour boards
Advanced TBR (tumour-board-ready)
- Everything in Premium
- A confidence level stated against each finding
- A tumour board FAQ that answers what the board will ask: which site to biopsy, what a borderline finding means, what the next line looks like
| Criteria | Used for |
|---|---|
| PERCIST | Metabolic response of solid tumours on FDG PET-CT |
| Lugano / Deauville | Staging and response in lymphoma |
| PSMA-RADS | Prostate cancer on PSMA PET-CT |
| SSTR-RADS | Neuroendocrine tumours on somatostatin-receptor (DOTA) PET-CT |
| TNM / FIGO | Anatomical staging written into the report, by cancer type |
Who leads it
Dr. Ajit S. Shinto
Nuclear medicine physician with more than 20 years in the specialty. He commissioned India’s first digital PET-CT scanner and has personally reported more than 30,000 PET-CT studies. He has built nuclear medicine departments three times over: at Amala, at Kovai Medical Center, and at Apollo Proton Cancer Centre.
Full profile →- Commissioned India's first digital PET-CT scanner, at Kovai Medical Center and Hospital, Coimbatore
- Personally reported more than 30,000 oncologic, cardiac and neurological PET-CT studies
- Established the nuclear medicine department at Amala Institute of Medical Sciences, Thrissur
- Built Kovai Medical Center’s department into a regional centre of excellence over nine years
- Commissioned the nuclear medicine division at Apollo Proton Cancer Centre, South Asia’s first proton therapy centre
- Established high-dose theranostics and Lu-177 PSMA / DOTATATE protocols at Bharath Hospital, Kottayam
- Chairs the Rhenium Task Force of the World Association of Radiopharmaceutical and Molecular Therapy (WARMTH)
“Nuclear medicine in India is limited less by equipment than by reading capacity. A remote reading model built on credentialed physicians takes that scarce expertise to centres that cannot hire it. What a Centre of Excellence adds is depth: sub-specialty readers, structured reporting, peer review, AI in the read. Better science, closer to the treatment decision.”
“India has the scanners but not enough physicians to read them, and it cannot add them fast enough, at roughly 40 new specialists a year against volumes compounding at 13%. A Centre of Excellence is how you make scarce expertise travel: pooled sub-specialty readers, interpreting to a high standard, with AI supporting them for speed and accuracy.”
Seven things that break in a single-reader department
None of this is anyone's fault. It is what happens when a whole department rests on one licence.
One reader is a person, not a system
Whatever that individual learned is what the department delivers. No peer review, no second read, nothing to catch drift.
What the CoE does: A written minimum reporting standard below which no report leaves 5C, applied across the whole network, owned and audited by the Head of the CoE, with peer review on complex cases.
Serial scans stop being comparable
A patient’s three scans across a treatment course get read without a fixed framework, sometimes by different people. The oncologist cannot tell progression from flare.
What the CoE does: Structured criteria every time (TNM, Lugano, PERCIST, PSMA-RADS, SSTR-RADS) and a tabulated comparison against the prior study.
The scarcest person does commodity work
A specialist who could run the therapy clinic, sit in tumour board or build theranostics spends the week typing routine whole-body reports.
What the CoE does: The routine volume comes to us. Your physician’s week goes back to therapy, clinics, trials and building the department.
One reader is a single point of failure
Leave, conferences, illness, resignation. The FDG dose is already paid for and decays regardless, and a vacancy means months of recruitment.
What the CoE does: A national network of credentialed nuclear medicine physicians with real depth of availability, and a turnaround we commit to and meet.
Formal criteria get skipped
No one reliably recalls every classification for every tumour under time pressure, so staging goes out without TNM and restaging without a response tool.
What the CoE does: AI-assisted staging and response summaries built into the read, so the classification is produced rather than recalled, then checked and signed by the physician.
Nobody checks the study was fit to read
Blood sugar at injection, uptake time and scan time are rarely recorded and almost never flagged, so compromised studies are reported as sound.
What the CoE does: Premium reports carry scan quality indicators and reference-organ SUVmax, so SUV comparisons across time points are valid.
The department head cannot see, so cannot manage
No objective view of turnaround, no quality audit trail, no way to know whether standards are holding.
What the CoE does: A platform dashboard: every case and every turnaround, visible to the department head.
Why no centre can fix this on its own
One physician is the wrong unit
A single in-house reader is a fixed, indivisible block with no redundancy. Size it for your peak and it idles at trough; size it for your average and it fails at peak.
In-house reading gets cheaper as it gets worse
A fixed salary over rising volume lowers the cost per study while turnaround, depth of read and the physician’s time for everything else degrade. A CoE’s cost per study is flat, and so is its quality.
Only aggregation pays for the depth
A minimum standard, peer review, AI quantification, structured templates and an audit trail cannot be built for one scanner’s volume. They work when the cost is spread across thousands of studies a month.
You are not buying reading. You are buying the depth that scale pays for.
More than a reading room
The Centre is also meant to raise the standard of nuclear medicine in India, and to make it a specialty students want to choose.
Research and publications
Multi-institutional studies and publication, led by a Principal Investigator on active nuclear medicine trials.
Theranostics
Helping centres build theranostic capability, and reading the scans that decide who is eligible for Lu-177 PSMA and DOTATATE therapy.
New diagnostic molecules
Bringing newer tracers into routine Indian practice as they arrive.
Therapy decisions
A nuclear medicine view on whether a treatment is working and what should change, written for the treating team.
A peer network
Access to the Head of the CoE and a panel of credentialed peers for the hardest cases, for centres that keep their own nuclear medicine physician.
Built for three kinds of centre
Usually Standard
Imaging and diagnostic centres
An affordable report, a scanner that pays back, and referring doctors who stay.
- The isotope dose does not wait. When your reader is away, that day’s FDG decays and the patient goes elsewhere. Our network does not take leave.
- Referring doctors leave over report quality, and never say why. The decline gets blamed on the market.
- You pay per study read. No salary through lean months, no notice period, no recruitment when someone resigns.
Usually Premium (Detailed)
Hospitals
A scanner running to the volume you planned, reports your oncologists can act on, and a department that keeps going when one person is away.
- Your physician keeps the work only an on-site specialist can do: therapy, clinics, tumour board. We take the routine volume.
- A written standard under every report, peer review on complex cases, and cover that does not depend on one person being in the building.
- Proof the study was fit to interpret, and reference values that make the next scan comparable.
Usually Advanced TBR
Cancer centres and oncology hospitals
A PET report that answers what the tumour board will ask, response assessment that holds across a treatment course, and room to build the therapy side.
- Serial comparability is a treatment-decision problem, not an inconvenience. The same standard at every time point.
- The tumour-board-ready report: a confidence level on every finding, and the board’s questions answered before it sits.
- Your nuclear medicine team is the gateway to Lu-177 PSMA and DOTATATE therapy and to trials. They should be building that, not typing reports.
In the news
All coverage →- Express Healthcare 5C Network launches remote Centre of Excellence for Nuclear Medicine
- News Patrolling 5C Network Launches AI-Integrated Centre of Excellence for Nuclear Medicine to Bridge India's Cancer Diagnostics Deficit
- Business News This Week 5C Network Launches AI-Integrated Centre of Excellence for Nuclear Medicine to Bridge India's Cancer Diagnostics Deficit
- Day Life News 5C Network Launches AI-Integrated Centre for Nuclear Medicine
Frequently asked questions
What is the 5C Nuclear Medicine Centre of Excellence?
Who reads and signs nuclear medicine reports at 5C Network?
Is it a physical centre?
Why does India need remote nuclear medicine reporting?
Which studies does the Centre of Excellence report?
Which reporting criteria are used?
How is AI used in 5C's nuclear medicine reports?
Will the Centre replace our in-house nuclear medicine physician?
How is report quality controlled?
What are the PET-CT report tiers?
What does nuclear medicine reporting from 5C cost?
Thirty minutes with Dr. Ajit Shinto
A clinical conversation, not a sales call. Dr. Ajit will want to understand how you report today and where the gaps usually sit in a department like yours. Bring your nuclear medicine physician. If it is useful, we then read five of your recent studies, including one or two you found difficult, and walk through them side by side with your own reports.
Book 30 minutes with the Head of the CoE
Tell us where to reach you — a 5C radiology consultant responds within one business day.
