Nuclear medicine for diagnosis in benign diseases of the skeleton

In summary, the lecture presents today's state of nuclear medical diganostics in benign bone disease, the radiopharmaceuticals, and the methods used. Besides the 99m-Tc-labeled diphosphonates a couple of additional radioactive labeled substances play an important part in bone scintigraphic imaging especially in scanning inflammatory bone disease and the bone marrow. There are several substances available to label leucocytes and human immunoglobulins. Concerning the methods the performance of the 3-phase bone scanning and the application of SPECT becomes increasingly important. In detail discussed are among other methods the inflammation-scanning in osteomyelitis, the scintigraphic imaging in benign bone tumors and tumor like lesions, in circulation disorders of the bone with necroses and hyperperfusion (reflex sympathetic dystrophy, transient hip osteoporosis), and in bone lesions following trauma or stress, for example also in battered child syndrome. The indication to the different imaging procedures as X-ray, computed tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance, and scintigraphic imaging are discussed, whereby the scintiscanning urges its place, mainly due to good specifity, in documenting the different functional states of the bone such as inflammation, perfusion, necrosis, tumor and/or bone marrow infiltration. (orig.)