How It Is Done

A salivary gland scan is usually done by a nuclear medicine technologist. The pictures are usually interpreted by a radiologist or nuclear medicine specialist.

Take off any jewelry that may get in the way of the scan.

During a salivary gland scan, you will sit with the camera placed at your neck. A small amount of the tracer is put in your vein (IV).

The camera will scan for radiation released by the tracer. The pictures are taken every few minutes during the scan. You need to stay very still during the scan so the pictures are not blurry.

You may be asked to suck on a lemon after the first pictures are taken. This causes your salivary glands to release more saliva. Then more pictures are taken.

A salivary gland scan takes about 1 hour.