Leukocyte (white blood cell or WBC) Scintigraphy

Leukocyte scintigraphy is recommended if an infectious/inflammatory disease is suspected and the origin of the infection is not found by other means. It provides the possibility of detecting origins of inflammation in the body, such as an osteomyelitis or inflammatory bowel disease, etc.

How should you prepare for the examination?

During this examination, scintigraphic images of your body are taken on two consecutive days. Please plan on about 6 hours for the first day and about 2 hours for the second day.

Examination procedure

A radioactive medication with low-level radiation will be injected into your arm vein. This is a radioactively labeled monoclonal antibody directed against granulocytes (a type of inflammatory cells). This antibody targets the granulocytes in the site of inflammation as well as those circulating in the blood and migrates with these cells into the site of inflammation. The gamma rays emitted from the radioactive drug is recorded by a gamma camera from outside of the body and displayed on a computer (scintigraphy). Such images are used for the diagnostic localization of the inflammation.

Immediately after the injection, images of the entire body are acquired using a gamma camera. Four and 24 hours later, additional whole body images are recorded. The image acquisition time is about 15-20 minutes on each day.

Additionally, tomographic images are also obtained, for which the camera heads slowly move around your body and takes pictures to obtain images from multiple different angles (SPECT). This sectional imaging enables more precise localization of the tracer in the body. The SPECT acquisition takes about 30-40 minutes, during which you must lie still on the examination table.