page_title: Bone scintigraphy
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Bone scintigraphy / History
caption_attribution_description: Osseous mets from prostate cancer; bone scan
context_page_description: A bone scan or bone scintigraphy is a nuclear medicine imaging technique of the bone. It can help diagnose a number of bone conditions, including cancer of the bone or metastasis, location of bone inflammation and fractures, and bone infection.
  Nuclear medicine provides functional imaging and allows visualisation of bone metabolism or bone remodeling, which most other imaging techniques cannot. Bone scintigraphy competes with positron emission tomography for imaging of abnormal metabolism in bones, but is considerably less expensive. Bone scintigraphy has higher sensitivity but lower specificity than CT or MRI for diagnosis of scaphoid fractures following negative plain radiography.
context_section_description: Some of the earliest investigations into skeletal metabolism were carried out by George de Hevesy in the 1930s, using phosphorus-32 and by Charles Pecher in the 1940s. 
  In the 1950s and 1960s calcium-45 was investigated, but as a beta emitter proved difficult to image. Imaging of positron and gamma emitters such as fluorine-18 and isotopes of strontium with rectilinear scanners was more useful. Use of technetium-99m (⁹⁹ᵐTc) labelled phosphates, diphosphonates or similar agents, as in the modern technique, was first proposed in 1971.
caption: Bone scan showing multiple bone metastases from prostate cancer.
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