A routine breast examination is advised for all women to identify any suspicious lumps so that breast cancer detection is made as early as possible. Mammography is the most common first line screening tool for breast cancer. But in some cases, mammography may miss some abnormalities, especially if the woman’s breast tissue is dense. Sometimes dense breast tissue and cancers may appear similar in mammography.
So, a lump that may be felt manually may appear as normal breast tissue when screened through mammography which may then lead to a biopsy to confirm cancer. But now, even the cancerous tissue that mammography misses can be identified by a new diagnostic technique called breast specific gamma imaging.
This is different from mammography, sonography or MRI. The imaging in breast specific gamma imaging is not anatomical, but functional. It is also much superior to traditional screening methods because gamma imaging picks up cells that are beginning to act cancerous even before the abnormality becomes advanced enough to be visible on a mammogram or a sonogram.
Even in women who are diagnosed with Breast Cancer using other methods, breast specific gamma imaging may prove beneficial because it can highlight other malignant lesions that might have been missed by the mammography or the physical exam.
The malignancies that are identified during diagnoses form an important aspect in determining the treatment to be administered. Sometimes, the gamma imaging may provide crucial information that necessitates important differences in the therapy.
Mammography relies hugely on the structure of the breast to identify cancers. Breast specific gamma imaging, on the other hand, tracks the uptake of a radiotracer or a dye by breast cancer cells. The BSGI technology uses a special dye that is injected intravenously. The absorption rate of the dye by normal breast tissue and cancerous tissue vary significantly and it is this property that helps identify breast cancer. A gamma camera is used to track the dye and the malignancies or lesions are identified digitally.
The diagnostic procedure is also comfortable compared to other methods. The woman only needs to be seated comfortably and the entire procedure is over within 40 minutes. The results can also be read immediately. Breast specific gamma imaging is especially useful to detect breast cancer in women who have dense breast tissue, breast implants or scar tissue. In such cases, a mammogram may be hard to read and gamma imaging can come in quite handy.
In fact, about 20 percent of the women who have breast cancer have normal mammogram
readings. The significance of BSGI is not to be underestimated.
