Quantitative bone scanning

The use of a computer coupled on-line with the scintillation camera allows an improvement of the finding of skeletal scintigraphy realized with 99mTc-pyrophosphate, making possible the identification of the smallest bone lesions. It also makes possible the quantification of the uptake degree of the radioindicator demonstrating, in normal subjects, an uptake ratio between the various skeletal segments of 1.07 +/- 0.06. In 44 metastatic lesions the ratio was 1.80 +/- 0.32, whilst in 14 areas of slight hyperfixation of the tracer a value of 1.24 +/- 0.09 was found. Since we were dealing with patients suffering from metastatic bone neoplasms, the authors outline the possibility that the quantification of data will allow the demonstration of the bone metastases even more precociously than with traditional scintigraphix examination.