Diagnostic Advances
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Oct 18, 2017; 8(10): 747-753
Published online Oct 18, 2017. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v8.i10.747
Nuclear medicine imaging in osteonecrosis of hip: Old and current concepts
Kanhaiyalal Agrawal, Sujit Kumar Tripathy, Ramesh Kumar Sen, S Santhosh, Anish Bhattacharya
Kanhaiyalal Agrawal, Department of Nuclear Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar 751019, India
Sujit Kumar Tripathy, Department of Orthopedics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneswar 751019, India
Ramesh Kumar Sen, Department of Orthopedics, Fortis Hospital, Mohali, Chandigarh 160162, India
S Santhosh, Institute of Nuclear Imaging and Molecular Medicine, Tamilnadu Government Multi Super Specialty Hospital, Anna Salai, Chennai, Tamilnadu 600002, India
Anish Bhattacharya, Department of Nuclear Medicine, PGIMER, Chandigarh 160012, India
Author contributions: Agrawal K and Tripathy SK prepared the initial draft and reviewed all available articles; Sen RK, Santhosh S and Bhattacharya A provided the intellectual content and images for the study; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors of this manuscript declare that they have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Sujit Kumar Tripathy, DNB, MBBS, MD, MS, MNAMS, Dip SICOT, MCH (UK), Associate Professor, Doctor, Department of Orthopaedics, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Sijua, Patrapada, Bhubaneswar 751019, India. sujitortho@aiimsbhubaneswar.edu.in
Telephone: +91-9438-884155 Fax: +91-0674-2476781
Received: January 26, 2017
Peer-review started: February 7, 2017
First decision: July 10, 2017
Revised: August 2, 2017
Accepted: August 15, 2017
Article in press: August 16, 2017
Published online: October 18, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: Early diagnosis and treatment remains the key to hip preservation in osteonecrosis (ON). Till date magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is considered as the gold standard diagnostic modality for ON. However with the improvement in nuclear imaging technique, the disease can be diagnosed even at a very early stage. Available literature suggests that single photon emission computed tomography/computed tomography (CT) bone scan and 18F-fluoride photon emission computed tomography/CT have similar or better results in comparison to MRI in ON of the femoral head. They also provide both morphological and metabolic information in the disease part and hence can indicate whether the disease is active or healed.