Clinical study of the application of SPECT, CT, and SPECT/CT for diagnosing rib diseases.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the practical application of SPECT, CT, and SPECT/CT to the diagnosis of rib diseases, and to compare their accuracies in differentiating benign and malignant rib diseases.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

SPECT, CT, and SPECT/CT were applied to 237 patients. 190 cases in total, with 305 focal lesions, agreed to clinical follow-up. Statistically significant differences (p < 0.05) were observed among these imaging modalities when their diagnosis agreement ratios (i.e., the percentage of correct diagnoses achieved using a particular imaging modality) were compared.

RESULTS

For the 81 cases that were confirmed to be malignant, the diagnosis agreement ratios of SPECT, CT, and SPECT/CT were 55.56, 76.54, and 92.59 %, respectively, which were significantly different (p < 0.05). For the 97 cases that were confirmed to be benign, the diagnosis agreement ratios of SPECT, CT, and SPECT/CT were 50.52, 83.51, and 92.78 %, respectively. For the benign cases, the diagnosis agreement ratio of SPECT was significantly different (p < 0.05) from those of CT and SPECT/CT, while the diagnosis agreement ratio of CT was not significantly different (p > 0.05) from that of SPECT/CT.

CONCLUSIONS

SPECT/CT fusion imaging yielded significantly improved diagnostic accuracy for rib lesions compared with SPECT or CT alone. SPECT/CT provides markedly more detailed information that is useful for rib lesion diagnosis.