Nuclear Medicine - Pictorial Essay

SPECT-CT for characterization of extraosseous uptake of 99mTc-methylene diphosphonate on bone scintigraphy

10.5152/dir.2013.054

  • Ramya Soundararajan
  • Niraj Naswa
  • Punit Sharma
  • Sellam Karunanithi
  • Aftab Hasan Nazar
  • Kalpa Jyoti Das
  • Chandrasekhar Bal
  • Arun Malhotra
  • Rakesh Kumar

Received Date: 12.02.2013 Accepted Date: 13.03.2013 Diagn Interv Radiol 2013;19(5):405-410

Bone scintigraphy is a sensitive and popular method for imaging a wide array of benign or malignant skeletal abnormalities. However, the uptake of tracers used for bone scintigraphy may be observed in various extraosseous sites, thereby limiting its specificity. It is difficult to correctly localize such sites of uptake on planar bone scintigraphy alone. The addition of hybrid single-photon emission computed tomography-computed tomography (SPECT-CT) under such circumstances is very useful. The present essay illustrates the commonly encountered extraosseous uptake of 99mTc-methylene diphosphonate (MDP) and the usefulness of hybrid SPECT-CT in clarifying 99mTc-MDP uptake.