Vertebral body hemangioma showing increased uptake of Tc-99m MDP and decreased Tc-99m labeled red blood cells

Intraosseous hemangioma of the appendicular skeleton: imaging features of 15 cases, and a review of the literature

OBJECTIVE

We performed a retrospective study of the imaging findings of 15 patients (nine female, six male, mean age 43 years) with the histopathological diagnosis of hemangioma.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Radiographs, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography, and bone scan were performed.

RESULTS

Lower extremity was involved in nine cases, upper extremity in three cases, the acetabulum in two cases and the ilium in one case. Fourteen of the lesions were intramedullary and one was subperiosteal. Radiographs identified the lobular osteolytic intramedullary lesions with sclerotic margins (eight cases) and coarse linear trabeculation (four cases) or matrix ossification (one case) within it or a heavily calcified lesion (one case). Lesion expanded and breached the cortical cortex in four cases. The subperiosteal hemangioma presented as a soft tissue mass with proximal periosteal reaction. MRI also identified the soft tissue mass in the case of the subperiosteal hemangioma. The CT scan demonstrated the lobular osteolytic lesions, the prominent trabeculation and matrix mineralization and evaluated the cortex. In all six cases, the lesion showed increased uptake in the bone scan.

CONCLUSIONS

This is the largest reported series of imaging features of intraosseous hemangiomas of appendicular skeleton. The lesion should be differentiated from other chondral or expansile lytic tumors. The final diagnosis can only be confirmed by histopathology.

Hemangioma of the Ilium Simulating an Aggressive Bone Lesion on Imaging

We present the case of a 35-year-old man with a hemangioma in the iliac wing that simulated an aggressive bone lesion on CT, MRI, and bone scintigraphy. On CT, the lesion, 12 cm in in maximum dimension, was expansile and septated. On MRI, the lesion was isointense with respect to muscle on T1 weighted images, and hyperintense on T2 images, with focal regions of cortical breach. Radionuclide bone scan showed increased tracer accumulation. The diagnosis was made following surgical biopsy, and the lesion was treated conservatively.

The role of single photon emission computed tomography in bone imaging

Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) of the bone is the second most frequently performed SPECT examination in routine nuclear medicine practice, with cardiac SPECT being the most frequent. Compared with planar scintigraphy, SPECT increases image contrast and improves lesion detection and localization. Studies have documented the unique diagnostic information provided by SPECT, particularly for avascular necrosis of the femoral head, in patients with back pain, for the differential diagnosis between malignant and benign spinal lesions, in the detection of metastatic cancer in the spine, for the diagnosis of temporomandibular joint internal derangement, and for the evaluation of acute and chronic knee pain. Although less rigorously documented, SPECT is being increasingly used in all types of situations that demand more precise anatomic localization of abnormal tracer uptake. The effectiveness of bone SPECT increases with the selection of the proper collimator, which allows one to acquire adequate counts and minimize the patient-to-detector distance. Low-energy, ultrahigh-resolution or high-resolution collimation is preferred over all-purpose collimators. Multihead gamma cameras can increase the counts obtained or shorten acquisition time, making SPECT acquisitions more practical in busy departments and also increasing image quality compared with single-head cameras. Iterative reconstruction, with the use of ordered subsets estimation maximization, provides better quality images than classical filtered back projection algorithms. Three-dimensional image analysis often aids lesion localization.