What is the average time to have a bone scan completed?

About 3 1/2 hours: From the start and taking of initial pictures to the delayed uptake pictures.

3 hours: Bone scan involves intravenous injection of radio tracer usually technetium 99m mdp which accumulates in skeleton. Scan may involve early phase(5-10 min) and late phase(2-3 hr) imaging.The time of bone scan is related to mineralization of skeleton. Bone scans usually take the longest time due to osteoporosis and the shortest time in young children. Bone scan is very sensisitive but not specific.

Between 3-4 hours: A bone scan can be performed in 4 steps. The first one is the blood flow followed by the immediate bone study, according to the reason of doing the test. The third step and the fourth one are the planar scan and the spect scan ( tomography). This is done 2-4 hours after the injection and last 30-45 minutes. Sometimes, when the bones are not well seen, a study can be obtained 24 hours later.