The measurement of regional bone metabolism is critical to understand the pathophysiology of metabolic bone diseases.
* Bone biopsy is considered the gold standard to quantify bone turnover; however, it is invasive, complex and costly to perform and subject to significant measurement errors.
* Measurements of serum or urine biomarkers of bone turnover are simple, cheap, quick, and non-invasive in measuring changes in bone metabolism, but only provide information on the global skeleton.
* The functional imaging technique of dynamic  [F]NaF PET scans can quantify regional bone turnover at specific sites of clinical importance such as the lumbar spine and hip and has been validated by comparison with the gold standard of bone biopsy.