Although there are many tests of pulmonary function in common usage, most of these measure only over-all function and are incapable of describing separately the behavior of different parts of the lung. Pulmonary arteriography has proven to be a valuable procedure for estimating the distribution of blood flow through the lungs but does not provide quantitative results. By bronchospirometry it has been possible to measure separately the ventilation and oxygen uptake of the two lungs or even of individual lobes, but considerable skill is required to obtain valid results, and the measurements must be made under conditions which are quite unphysiological. Both arteriography and bronchospirometry, furthermore, are unpleasant for the patient and are not without hazard.The use of a radioactive tracer gas for assessing regional ventilation was reported in 1955 by Knipping and co-workers (2). They recorded external counting rate over multiple areas of the chest during breathing of air containing xenon'33 and were able to show the presence of unventilated or markedly underventilated areas in certain patients. In subsequent publications (3-8), these and other workers extended their observations and described a method of displaying the results pictorially but did not attempt to estimate regional ventilation quantitatively.More recently, Dyson and co-workers (9) have described the use of oxygen15 with external