Double-bed SPECT/CT for Bone Scintigraphy in Initial Staging of Cancer Patients

Bone scintigraphy is currently a reference test in the initial staging of cancer. Bone scintigraphy historically consists in a planar whole-body scintigraphy (WBS). SPECT/CT has been shown to dramatically reduce the proportion of inconclusive results and increase the specificity of bone scintigraphy. Therefore, in most of nuclear médicine centers, the usual protocol for staging of bone metastases consists in a whole-body planar acquisition followed, if needed, by a targeted SPECT/CT to characterize suspicious or equivocal uptakes seen on WBS. The aim of this study is to assess the incremental diagnostic utility of a systematic double-bed SPECT/CT acquisition for bone scintigraphy in initial staging of cancer patients compared with the conventional "WBS plus single-bed targeted SPECT/CT" strategy.