Wibby, 16-year-old thoroughbred gelding, undergoes a whole bone body scan, which is now quicker and quieter thanks to upgrades to UW Veterinary Care’s nuclear imaging capabilities. Fourth-year veterinary medical student Sarah Springborn, left, keeps Wibbe calm and still while diagnostic imaging technicians Lori Pike, middle, and Amy Lang operate the machine’s improved gamma camera and gantry. (Photo: Nik Hawkins)
New enhancements to nuclear imaging technology at UW Veterinary Care (UWVC) are speeding up visits and improving diagnoses for animal patients.
For the last 25 years, UWVC has employed an imaging method called nuclear scintigraphy, in which tracers—small doses of radioactive elements—are tagged to injected drugs that travel to specific sites in the body. By using a gamma camera to determine the location and quantity of the element in an organ, veterinarians can measure how well it is functioning or if an active process, like cancer growth or bone fracture repair, is affecting the area.
And now, with the recent installment of a new and improved gamma camera, images can be obtained more quickly and with greater detail.
Recent upgrades also help reduce stress for animals. The new gantry is quieter, making it less disruptive, and it’s more mobile, so it can move around the patient rather than the animal having to shift into different positions.
Developed in 1957, nuclear scintigraphy is still used today in human medicine; UWVC is the only veterinary medical clinic in Wisconsin to offer this technology. In veterinary medicine, it is especially useful for honing in on the locations of active bone conditions in horses.
“When a horse comes to us displaying a lameness that can’t be localized by examination alone, we can inject it with a nucleotide that tracks to areas where bones are repairing from a break, responding to infection, or having an arthritic response,” says Waller. “Using the gamma camera, we can get a pretty good idea of where the problem lies and then use radiography, ultrasound, or CT to do a more directed and detailed study of the area.”
Nuclear imaging also has applications for small animals, from screening for metastatic bone cancer to assessing thyroid and kidney function in cats.
Nik Hawkins