Advanced Breast Cancer Diagnosis
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. Read more…
