Seminars in nuclear medicine
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Computerized axial transmission tomography and radionuclide imaging are complementary procedures, and the following recommendations are made as to their use. Where there is no real clinical suspicion of intracranial disease, either modality can be used for "rule out" screening; the choice can frequently be made on the basis of which modality is cheaper or more quickly available. It should be remembered that "quicker" is often "cheaper". ⋯ Such examples might include the fresh cerebral hemorrhage demonstrated by CT imaging, the AV malformation defined by dynamic-static radionuclide imaging, or multifocal metastatic lesions defined by either. However, when the clinical picture is not totally and satisfactorily explained by the demonstrated disease, the other modality should also be employed. Under many circumstances, neither study will be so reliable, specific, and free of false-negative or false-positive findings as to warrant ignoring the additional information potentially available from the other study.