Research article

SPECT/CT-plethysmography – non-invasive quantitation of bone and soft tissue blood flow

Lior Dayan¹ , Zohar Keidar² , Ora Israel² , Victor Milloul³ , Johnathan Sachs² and Giris Jacob⁴

¹  Ortopedic B and Recanati Autonomic Dysfunction Center, Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel

²  Nuclear Medicine department, Rambam Health Care Campus & The Technion Faculty of Medicine, Haifa, Israel

³  Rambam Health Care Campus & The Technion Faculty of Medicine – IIT, Haifa, Israel

⁴  Director, J. Recanati Autonomic Dysfunction Center, Medicine A, Rambam Health Care Campus & The Technion Faculty of Medicine – IIT, Haifa, Israel

author email corresponding author email

Journal of Orthopaedic Surgery and Research 2008, 3:36doi:10.1186/1749-799X-3-36

Published:	18 August 2008

Abstract

Preserved blood flow to bone and soft tissue is essential for their normal function. To date only numerous methods are suitable for direct bone blood flow (BBF) measurement. Here, we introduce a novel quantitative method for bone and soft tissue blood flow (BBF and SBF, respectively) measurement. It involves a combination of SPECT/CT imaging for blood pool localization in a specific region of interest ("soft" and "hard" tissues composing a limb) with veno-occlusive plethysmography. Using it, we measured BBF and SBF in the four limbs of 10 healthy subjects. At steady state blood flow measurements in the four limbs were similar, ranging between 5.5 – 6.5 and 1.87–2.48 ml per 100 ml of tissue per minute for BBF and SBF, respectively. Our results are comparable to those in the literature. We concluded that SPECT/CT-plethysmography appears to be a readily available and easy to use method to measure BBF and SBF, and can be added to the armamentarium of methods for BBF measurements.