New Mammography Technology for Breast Cancer
Posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
There are two standard methods used for the detection of breast cancer, standard mammography and MRI treatment. In the process of breast imaging, breast density and hormonal status of a woman seems to lessen the effectiveness of the above two methods.
A recent medical study shows that the use of Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) in the detection of breast cancer overcomes the above problems and yields accurate results. The results of the study will be tabled during the annual meet of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) today.
“The ability of PEM to detect cancer does not appear to be adversely affected by breast density, hormone replacement therapy or menopausal status,” said lead researcher Kathy Schilling, M.D., director of breast imaging and intervention at the Center for Breast Care at Boca Raton Community Hospital in Florida. “The sensitivity of PEM is equal to or better than breast MRI, and PEM has fewer false-positive results.”
The effectiveness of the X-ray mammography for detecting lesions on dense breasts is affected by the fatty and glandular tissues. Breast MRI is a more popular technique, but has a serious flaw; the occurrences of false-positive test results is very high. Researchers attribute this problem to the fluctuating hormonal levels in a women’s body during menopause. According to Dr. Schilling, this problem does not affect the results of the PEM tests. Hence, he believes that the PEM is more effective in the accurate detection of breast cancer.
“Unless the MRI is performed on day seven through 14 of a woman’s cycle, reading MRI images is extremely difficult,” Dr. Schilling said. “This is a significant problem with breast MRI.”
The study was conducted on 208 breast cancer patients who were put through the PEM test. During the test, radioactive material in small quantity was injected into the body of the patients in order to gauge the metabolic activity and detect the disease. A specialized PET unit (built to cater to the needs of breasts and smaller body parts) was used to conduct the PEM test. Out of the 189 patients who were imaged for the presence of malignant lesions, the PEM test found 176 patients with 93 percent sensitivity rate. It was also found that 15 percent of the patients had DCIS or Ductal carcinoma in situ (a noninvasive cancer limited to the breast ducts only. Eighty-five percent of the patients were detected with invasive cancer.
The PEM test was found to accurately detect cancer in 100 percent of fatty breasts, 85 percent of highly dense breasts, 93 percent of dense breasts, 93 percent who underwent hormone replacement therapy, 93 percent who did not undergo hormone replacement therapy, 90 percent in pre-menopausal and 94 percent in post-menopausal patients.
Dr. Schilling believes that patients are more at ease with the PEM test than a MRI as they can even sit upright at the time of the test and also are not left alone during the test. The PEM test produces 48 images compared to the 2000 + images of a MRI test which facilitates the correlation with the mammogram of the woman. All these results are evidence enough to show that the PEM is a technique that can be relied on and is set to become a standard in the near future for accurate and easy breast cancer detection.
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