Perfusion and Ventilation Lung Scanning

Abstract

As in many other branches of respiratory medicine, the use of radionuclides to image the different functions of the lung is a recent development. The clinical application of these techniques began following the work of Wagner in 1963 who used a single intravenous injection of microparticles labelled with a gamma-ray emitting radionuclide and was able to diagnose pulmonary emboli accurately without the need for an invasive procedure. Improvements in the imaging equipment, with the introduction of the gamma-camera by Anger in 1968, have made it possible to view the different surfaces of the lung, providing the facility of defining the anatomy of functional defects. Finally, with the provision of the newer gaseous radionuclides obtained from a cyclotron, e.g. the short half-life krypton-81m, defects of ventilation may also now be visualized.