[Bone metastases: new trends in diagnostic imaging]

Skeletal metastases are common in patients with cancers of the breast, lung, kidneys, prostate, and thyroid gland. Two main aspects have to be considered in diagnostic imaging. Screening in patients with known primary tumor. Triphasic Sczintigraphy is the imaging modality of choice for this purpose, however, whole-body-magnetic resonance imaging seems to be a potential alternative. Evaluation of suspicious skeletal lesions, which is currently dominated by magnetic resonance imaging. New perspectives for preoperative staging as well as for reconstruction- and implant-surgery are made available by multidetector-row-computed tomography. Non-invasive techniques, such as diffusion weighted imaging, positron emission tomography and positron emission tomography/computed tomography are now available, which seem to have potential for reliable tissue characterization. This feature is critical for monitoring treatment response in oncology.