131I uptake in intraosseous hemangioma of the skull: mimicking a bone metastasis in thyroid cancer.

We report a case of unusual 131I uptake in the skull in a patient who received total thyroidectomy and cervical lymph node dissection for papillary thyroid carcinoma. This uptake mimicked a bone metastasis on posttherapeutic 131I whole-body scan. The lesion was further evaluated by 131I SPECT/CT and MRI, and it was identified as intraosseous hemangioma. For the prevention of unnecessary repeat ablation therapies and physicians' confusion, the nuclear medicine physicians have to consider the 131I accumulation in the skull intraosseous hemangioma as a possible cause of false-positive uptake.