Dr. Daniel Amen is the founder and medical director of the six Amen clinics in the United States. His innovative methods make use of SPECT imaging in a way they have never been used previously. The praise of his innovative methods and practice of psychiatry make him one of the most renowned psychiatrists in America today. He is a regular name on the New York Times list of best selling authors, and he frequently makes appearances on television shows such as Dr. Phil and The View.

As well as being a psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Amen is also a physician, and it is this combination of medical science and mental science background that gives him the advantage of success in his field. His clinics have performed over 100,000 SPECT imaging scans on patients to help them with a plan for developing better brain health. Dr. Amen is recognized as the leader in the field of studies on brain damage in professional football players, and was also awarded the title of “Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.”

Dr. Amen has made his expertise widely available to the public through his psychiatric celebrity status. His television specials and appearances have raised a great deal of awareness on brain science, and have raised a great deal of funding for public television. The books and articles he has written and contributed to have been translated into many international languages, as well as reaching the highest rungs of the best seller ranks.

Dr. Amen has encountered his share of criticism as well. Critics of his work claim that he professes to be a mind reader, overstepping the limitations of what a SPECT image can reveal about a brain. Others say that his clinical practices misuse medical technology, exposing people to potentiallty hazardous nuclear medicine that has not been long enough established. It is true that SPECT imaging is a recent science, but the claims that Amen clinics are mishandling the science are unfounded.

The science behind SPECT Imaging offers a breakthrough for people who needed help caring for a vital organ that people sometimes overlook in the creation of their lifestyle:  the brain. SPECT stands for single photo emission computed tomography. It is a type of brain scan that uses nuclear medicine to observe the activity patterns and blood flow in glands and organs. This medical technology has become a valuable tool in detecting health problems and in preventative medicine. It became much more accessible to the public when Dr. Daniel Amen began offering SPECT imaging services in his clinics for the purpose of gauging the health of people’s brains.

In the medical community, SPECT imaging is used on the brain for the purpose of studying brain injury, dementia and Alzheimer’s, seizure activity and other forms of brain disease. At Amen clinics, which are located in six cities across the United States, the medical science of SPECT imaging is combined with the practice of psychiatry to assess psychiatric issues, anxiety, memory problems, dysfunction, substance abuse, types of ADD, depression and aggression. A person can learn things about their brain that they may have spent a lifetime trying to understand in a matter of hours.

What people ingest and how people live has an immense effect on the health of their brains. A person’s diet habits, substance abuse patterns, medications and sleep habits can all be detected through SPECT imaging. The combination of the SPECT imaging, which requires no more of the patient than any medical brain scan would, and a consultation with a physician who assesses the diet and lifestyle habits of the individual, creates an accurate assessment of why the individual’s brain is in the condition that it is in, as well as how to change it if the condition is bad.