A gallium scintigraphy uses 67Ga-citrate to diagnose inflammations, abscesses or tumors. Whole body scintigraphy with gallium-67, can be useful in the detection of sites of infection, for grading Hodgkin's and Non Hodgkin's Lymphomas and for monitoring the activity of the disease.

See also Inflammation Scintigraphy and Abscess Scintigraphy.

A gas ventilation scintigraphy is a diagnostic imaging test of lung ventilation with radioactive noble gases during breathing maneuvers, e.g. with krypton (81mKr) or xenon (133Xe).
The radioactive gas is administered by a mask and requires a special delivery and trapping system (gas trap). The radioactivity in the lungs is measured with a gamma camera and is subsequently evaluated.
The use of krypton or xenon gases involves problems like the relatively short half-lives (about 15-30 seconds) and relatively high costs of xenon and krypton. The short half-life requires that the scan is performed directly after administration of the gas. In addition, the gaseous radiopharmaceutical is expelled from the body almost quantitatively within a few minutes of completing the study.
A ventilation scintigraphy combined with a pulmonary perfusion scintigraphy is highly sensitive for the detection of pulmonary embolism.
Radioactive noble gases are widely used as a ventilation agent to diagnose pulmonary embolism. However, 81mKr and 133Xe are rare and expensive, which limits their continuous availability. Tc99m-Technegas can be an alternative ventilation agent with the advantage of being less expensive and available daily.

See also Inhalation Scintigraphy.

In nuclear medicine a hot spot describes a strong activity enrichment in one or more ranges of the organ or body part which is examined.
A pinhole collimator may be used if images of a hot spot and the surrounding with very high resolution are necessary. Zoom magnification or a converging collimator also may be used to improve resolution and assign the hot spot.

The common radionuclide used for inflammation scintigraphy is 67Ga-citrate, which accumulates in inflammatory lesions and certain neoplasms. A 67 gallium scan may include scintigrams of the whole body or a specific region, performed after i.v. injection. Additionally, a single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) can be performed. A pathological process presents itself as activity enrichment.

Scintigraphic imaging of the lungs is a sensitive diagnostic imaging tool to detect certain kinds of pulmonary abnormalities in correlation with clinical data and chest radiographs. Pulmonary scintigraphy is particularly useful in diagnosing medical conditions such as pulmonary embolism, bronchial carcinoma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Lung scintigraphy can be performed with radioaerosols, gaseous radiopharmaceuticals and technetium-99m-labeled perfusion agents that are localized by temporary capillary blockade.

Different types of lung scintigraphy include:
The choice of the radioactive tracer varies and depends on the pulmonary function to be imaged. The radioactive tracer distribution within the lungs can be displayed on a computer screen via a gamma camera, a scanner or some other similarly suitable detector that records the radioactive disintegrations emitted by the patient. The images obtained present chromatic variations proportional to the regional radioactivity.