Evaluation of suspected malignant pulmonary lesions with 201Tl single photon emission computed tomography

201Tl single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was evaluated in 170 patients suspected of having a malignant pulmonary lesion greater than 20 mm in diameter on the surgical specimen. Delayed SPECT (at 3 h after injection) visualized all of the 147 malignant pulmonary lesions and 16 of the 23 (69.6%) benign pulmonary lesions, and generally exhibited the lesion more clearly than the early SPECT images (at 15 min after injection). There was no significant difference in delayed ratio (uptake ratio of the lesion to the normal lung on delayed scan) among the various histological groups except between the adenocarcinoma and large cell carcinoma groups (P < 0.05), and no difference was noted between the malignant and benign lesions. However, in retention index (degree of retention in the lesion) a significant difference was noted between the malignant and benign lesions (P < 0.01), although there was no significant difference in this index among malignant different histology groups. These results indicate that this method is useful for visualizing malignant pulmonary lesions greater than 20 mm in diameter to exclude the possibility of malignancy in the lesions when no abnormal 201Tl accumulation is observed. When the lesion shows abnormal 201Tl accumulation, the retention index seems to help differentiate malignant from benign lesions.