[Respiratory nuclear medicine for general radiologist].

This paper describes some of the basic pathophysiologic information required for the interpretation of pulmonary perfusion and ventilation scintigraphy, i.e., perfusion reduction associated with hypoxic vasoconstriction due to ventilatory dysfunction, vascular beds in the upper lung as a reserve of perfusion, stripe sign, fissure sign, characteristic MAA distributions in right-to-left shunt, and different tracer distributions in the lung according to tracer sizes. The utility of perfusion and xenon-133 SPECT in the evaluation of cross-sectional lung function in various disorders is also emphasized. Also described are the utility of Tc-99m-DTPA lung scan in the evaluation of alveolar permeability, Ga-67 scan in the diagnosis of sarcoidosis, bone scans in the diagnosis of pulmonary metastatic calcifications and stress rib fractures, lymphoscintigraphy in the diagnosis of chylothorax, and Tc-99m-HSA scan in the detection of bleeding sites.