Now simple, cheap nuclear medicine technique to diagnose breast cancer

Scintimammography is a nuclear medicine imaging technique that offers new hope

The Director and Chief of Nuclear Medicine, Utkal Institute of Medical Sciences, Bhubaneshwar, Birendra K Das has said scintimammography - a nuclear medicine imaging instrument - is a powerful method in the diagnosis of the breast cancer. In this procedure, manipulation of breasts such as compression required to be done during conventional mammography is not needed.

In an interview to Newsline, Das said scintimammography was a new imaging method, in which a radiopharmaceutical (Tc-99mm-sestamibi) is administrated intravenously and images of the breast are taken using a gamma camera giving immediate results.

“Several multi centric studies with blinded image interpretation have established the sensitivity and specificity of Scintimammography to be above 85 and 90 percent respectively as compared to 89 and 14 percent for X-ray mammograms,” he said.