A prospective study with a new tumour-seeking agent, 99Tcm-glutathione (GSH), was performed on 17 patients with choroidal melanoma. Planar and SPECT images using 99Tcm-GSH clearly demonstrated melanotic melanoma but failed to show amelonotic melanomas. Following confirmation of our results by concurrent ultrasonography and magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography, patients were managed by either 125I plaque brachytherapy, diode laser transpupillary thermotherapy or enucleation depending on the site and location. In combination with other diagnostic tests, 99Tcm-GSH scintigraphy may play a role in the detection of uveal melanoma and its possible distant metastases.

Technetium-99m(V)-dimercaptosuccinic acid scintigraphy was used to evaluate three patients with intraocular tumors who had metastatic breast, lung, and rectal carcinomas, respectively. At the time of initial examination, two patients had no known systemic cancer, but the scintigraphy results in one patient revealed the primary site and were highly suggestive of disseminated carcinomatosis in the other patient. In the third patient, scintigraphy was successful to confirm very small bilateral intraocular tumors and also other systemic lesions. Technetium-99m(V)-dimercaptosuccinic acid scintigraphy can be reliably employed in a very select group of patients with intraocular tumors where metastatic carcinoma is a serious diagnostic possibility against a primary intraocular malignancy. This safe and promising tumor-imaging agent has the ability to demonstrate the ocular lesions and other systemic foci simultaneously, information that would prove to be crucial in both the diagnosis and the management of the patient.