Preliminary study on the basic pattern of bone marrow scintigraphy in acute leukemia

98 cases of acute leukemia had been studied with technetium-99m sulfur colloid bone marrow scintigraphy. The basic pattern was: (1) The generalized depression of central bone marrow (CBM) is most striking and its extent and degree of the depression is closely related with clinical staging of the disease. It was also found that the activity of CBM gradually increased with prolongation of complete remission course. (2) 72.4% cases showed variable degrees of peripheral bone marrow cavity expansion. Most of the peripheral expansion foci are localized in epiphyses of the knee joint, or further extended to cavity of long bone in extremities. In conclusion, bone marrow imaging is helpful to: (1) the diagnosis and evaluation of the distribution of hemapoietic activity in acate leukemia; (2) evaluation of the effect of chemotherapy and judgement of the prognosis; (3) the activity of CBM can probably be also used as an index to judge the clinical situation of the patient