A clinical trial of the value of a tomographic section view to identify liver abnormalities by radionuclide imaging, with special reference to metastatic disease.

A prospective trial was carried out to assess the value of a radionuclide transverse section view in addition to conventional radionuclide scans of the liver. Reports for 373 patients were analysed and compared with the final independent clinical diagnosis. Although several individual cases were more accurately diagnosed using the tomographic section view, the trial did not demonstrate a significant increase in accuracy of diagnosis in liver disease. Some possible reasons for this are discussed, mainly the difficulty of identifying and quantifying truly abnormal features of liver radioisotope scans.