Bone scintigraphy

A bone scan or bone scintigraphy /sɪnˈtɪɡrəfi/ is a nuclear scanning test to find certain abnormalities in bone. It is primarily used to help diagnose a number of conditions relating to bones, including: cancer of the bone or cancers that have spread (metastasized) to the bone, locating some sources of bone inflammation (e.g. bone pain such as lower back pain due to a fracture), the diagnosis of fractures that may not be visible in traditional X-ray images, and the detection of damage to bones due to certain infections and other problems.

Nuclear medicine bone scans are one of a number of methods of bone imaging, all of which are used to visually detect bone abnormalities. Such imaging studies include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray computed tomography (CT) and in the case of 'bone scans' nuclear medicine. However, a nuclear bone scan is a functional test: it measures an aspect of bone metabolism or bone remodeling, which most other imaging techniques cannot. The nuclear bone scan competes with the FDG-PET scan in seeing abnormal metabolism in bones, but it is considerably less expensive.