Bones are the casing of the body that stores adequate amount of important minerals and provides strong support to the body. Bone growth and renewal is a part of body metabolism that creates energy. However, due to some reasons, bone metabolism can be hampered.

These changes can be observed through pictures. Bone scanning and nuclear medicines are important in the diagnosis of hidden and slight bone fractures. Besides determination of bone fractures, bone scanning is also helpful in detecting arthritis, bone tumors, Paget's disease, fibrous dysphasia, infections of joints, a vascular necrosis or impaired bone blood supply and unexplained bone blood supply.

Bone scanning and nuclear medicines procedure use little amount of radioactive compounds or tracers during treatment. Once introduced in the body, compounds accumulate in the body parts as well as tissues and eventually emit the radiations in the form of gamma rays. With the help of gamma cameras, detection of the rays is possible and by making use of images, diagnosis becomes easy.

Bone scanning and nuclear medicines are exactly opposite to X-ray examination. In the X-ray examination, radiation passes through the body and creates images but in case of bone scanning and nuclear medicines, source of radiation is given into the body and image is created by detecting them. During treatment, patient receives tracers in the form of injections into the veins.

Following injection of the tracer, some time is required for circulation and absorption in the blood. This period is about one to two hours. After this, scanning is done with the help of gamma cameras and accordingly a computer creates images of the bones for diagnosis. Abnormal bone metabolism can be observed through the darker hot spots and lighter cold spots on the image. Process of bone scanning and nuclear medicines is sensitive to the abnormal bone, where as metabolism is less helpful in exact cause of abnormalities in bone scanning and nuclear medicines.

Sometimes doses of tracers may not be absorbed completely by blood and therefore removal of unabsorbed compounds is necessary. To flush them out of the body, doctor gives advice to drink more water.

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