Like almost any technology, medical devices go in and out of vogue all the time. One thing I find worth noticing is the growth in Nuclear Medicine due to the introduction of PET/CT imaging. Just like IMRT spurred explosive growth in external beam radiotherapy, PET/CT scan promises to do the same to nuclear medicine imaging. One of the technologies in development is LSO scintillation crystal, used in PET detectors. Compared to older BGO crystals, it has certain merits. The raw source, Lutetium, cost about six times as much as gold. Considering that scintillation crystals are macroscopic sized, the cost of raw element would be considerable.
Lutetium is a rare earth element, commonly found with other Lutetium. As I learned in grade school, China is a major exporter of rare earth elements. (Can you tell I'm Chinese? It's one of the few things I learned in the Communist brainwashing.) Chances are, most Lutetium in the world is produced in China. Another example of the interdependence of global economy. China can't produce LSO based detectors, but it produces the raw material, and uses the devices produced.
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