The radiology of bone and soft tissue sarcomas

Solitary lesions of bone often have characteristic radiographic patterns that suggest the diagnosis of a specific bone tumor. Differentiation of tumor from infection, however, frequently may be impossible, and the majority of bone lesions require biopsy for histologic confirmation of the type of tumor or for identification of the infectious organism. Soft tissue masses, unlike bone tumors, most commonly look alike. They too require biopsy, but in this case to distinguish a benign mass from a soft tissue sarcoma. Special radiographic techniques such as isotopic and CAT scans or angiography add information about the morphology and response of adjacent bone, but fail to differentiate one category of disease from another or to establish a histologic diagnosis of the type of tumor.