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A bone scan or bone scintigraphy / s ɪ n ˈ t ɪ ɡ r ə f i / is a nuclear medicine imaging technique used to help diagnose and assess different bone diseases. These include cancer of the bone or metastasis, location of bone inflammation and fractures (that may not be visible in traditional X-ray images), and bone infection (osteomyelitis).
Nuclear medicine imaging studies are generally more organ-, tissue- or disease-specific (e.g.: lungs scan, heart scan, bone scan, brain scan, tumor, infection, Parkinson etc.) than those in conventional radiology imaging, which focus on a particular section of the body (e.g.: chest X-ray, abdomen/pelvis CT scan, head CT scan, etc.).
The DXA scan is typically used to diagnose and follow osteoporosis, as contrasted to the nuclear bone scan, which is sensitive to certain metabolic diseases of bones in which bones are attempting to heal from infections, fractures, or tumors.
It is not used for bone imaging, as the image quality is not good enough to make an accurate diagnostic image for fractures, inflammation, etc. It can also be used to measure total body fat, though this is not common. The radiation dose received from DEXA scans is very low, much lower than projection radiography examinations. [citation needed]
SPECT image (bone tracer) of a mouse MIP Collimator used to collimate gamma rays (red arrows) in a gamma camera. Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT, or less commonly, SPET) is a nuclear medicine tomographic imaging technique using gamma rays. [1]
People with hypertrophic osteoarthropathy may have bone scans showing parallel lines of activity along the cortex of the shafts and ends of tibiae, femurs and radii; especially around the knees, ankles and wrists. This activity may decrease after treatment of the underlying cause. [4]
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The most common isotope used in diagnostic scans is Technetium-99m, used in approximately 85% of all nuclear medicine diagnostic scans worldwide. It is used for diagnoses involving a large range of body parts and diseases such as cancers and neurological problems. [ 1 ]