Quantification of Tracer Kinetics in Intra- and Extrahepatic Bile Ducts and of Gallbladder Filling Rates in Hepatobiliary Dynamic Scintigraphy Using 99mTc-IDA Derivates

A method is presented of calculating the flow of 99mTc-labelled IDA derivates in intra- and extrahepatic bile ducts. By computer means the superimposed liver parenchymal activity is subtracted from the original sequence data in each pixel and at each time. In addition to known evaluation methods, the described procedure seems to be helpful for clinical application in order to better display anatomical details of intrahepatic structures like bile ducts and to calculate quantitative parameters like appearance times in intra- and extrahepatic regions. Examples are given and the possibility of calculating a gallbladder filling rate for separating normal gallbladders from stone-filled ones is statistically proven.