Application of nuclear scintigraphy to evaluation of pulmonary function

Nuclear imaging techniques have a long history in pulmonary medicine and the clinical and experimental uses of lung scintigraphy have largely expanded these last years. Currently, the pulmonary applications of nuclear scintigraphy are essentially: (I), the study of regional lung function; (II), the imaging of pulmonary infection and/or inflammation; (III), the determination of inflammatory cells involvement in lung diseases; (IV), the assessment of the alveolar-capillary barrier integrity; (V), the imaging of lung cancers and (VI), the study of aerosol deposition within the lung.
Many faculty of veterinary medicine have acquired nuclear imaging facilities. The primary application of scintigraphy is in the investigation of equine orthopaedic conditions and, with the exception of rodents, only a few publications report the use of lung scintigraphy in any animal species. Nevertheless, lung scintigraphy using animals would be of great interest to better understand the lung physiology in general as well as animals’ peculiarities in particular.
Following a brief introduction to the technique, this paper will review the main applications of pulmonary scintigraphy and will survey some new nuclear imaging techniques that should be available in the next future.