Emergency Radionuclide Imaging of the Thorax and Abdomen

Nuclear medicine (NM) can play important primary and secondary roles in diagnosis and management in the emergency setting. Within the radiological armamentarium, selected scintigraphic examinations offer significant value because those negative examinations exclude diagnoses with high certainty, while positive examinations direct appropriate management. Currently, common radionuclide imaging examinations of the thorax and abdomen in the emergency setting include ventilation/perfusion (V/Q) lung scintigraphy, myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI), hepatobiliary scintigraphy (HBS), radiolabeled RBC gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding study, and Meckel’s diverticulum scintigraphy.