Left inguinal hernia mimicking metastasis on bone scan.

Inguinal hernia is a well-known entity that usually affects males. The most common herniated organs are parts of the bowel, omentum, or fat. Urinary bladder herniation into the inguinal region is very rare and is often diagnosed during inguinal hernia surgery.

Follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma presenting as a toxic nodule by I-123 scintigraphy.

The risk of malignancy in a "hot" thyroid nodule detected by radioiodine scintigraphy is rare. We report a case of a 63-year-old man with a hyperfunctioning nodule demonstrated by radioiodine scintigraphy and cytology suspicious for follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma (FVPTC). There were no locoregional or distant metastases at initial diagnosis.

Spontaneous transition of an autonomously functioning thyroid adenoma to Graves' disease.

We report a case of a 57-year-old postmenopausal woman with an autonomously functioning thyroid adenoma spontaneously developing Graves' disease (GD) as documented by I-123 scintigraphy. To date, anecdotal case reports citing the progression of an autonomous nodule to GD have documented either a major thyroidal insult, spontaneous or therapeutic, or the activation of thyroid tissue by circulating thyroid stimulating IgG, with variable progression characteristics. In contradiction to the proposed inciting factors, our patient underwent a minimally invasive fine needle aspiration biopsy followed by suppressive pharmacotherapy.

The role of nuclear imaging in multiple endocrine neoplasia 1 (MEN 1).

Multiple endocrine neoplasia 1 (MEN 1) is a rare genetic disorder classically characterized by a predisposition to tumors of the parathyroid glands, anterior pituitary gland, and pancreatic islet cells (1). In addition to exhibiting these characteristic tumors, MEN 1 patients also have an increased propensity for other tumors such as carcinoids, adrenal adenomas, angiofibromas, and lipomas (1, 2, 3). Although MEN 1 is rare, with a prevalence of approximately 2 per 100,000 people, recognition of this syndrome is extremely important for both patient treatment and evaluation of family members (1, 4).

HIV-associated lymphocytic interstitial pneumonitis causes diffuse sestamibi lung uptake in myocardial perfusion imaging.

Technetium-99m ((99m)Tc) sestamibi myocardial perfusion scintigraphy (MPI) is widely used for the diagnosis and assessment of prognosis in patients with suspected coronary artery disease. During these investigations, inspection of raw projected data for the purpose of quality control may occasionally yield incidental noncardiac findings that suggest the presence of another primary noncardiac disease. We present a 66-year-old HIV patient with a tissue diagnosis of lymphoid interstitial pneumonitis (LIP), who demonstrated a diffuse increase of (99m)Tc sestamibi in bilateral lung fields both in rest and stress MPI.

Ordered subset expectation maximization and wide beam reconstruction "half-time" gated myocardial perfusion SPECT functional imaging: a comparison to "full-time" filtered backprojection.

Objectives: Compared to filtered back projection (FBP), OSEM with resolution recovery (OSEM-RR) and wide beam reconstruction (WBR)(UltraSPECT Ltd.), which resolve resolution and suppress noise simultaneously during reconstruction, have been shown to maintain/improve myocardial perfusion SPECT quality, even with low count density half-time acquisitions. We postulated that their characteristics would be advantageous for gated SPECT, where each frame is only 1/8th the count density of the summed perfusion images.