BSGI improves breast cancer detection

May 3 2010

A new study, presented at the American Society of Breast Surgeons Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, found that Breast-Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI) is highly accurate in monitoring the response of breast cancers to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.  

BSGI, a molecular breast imaging technique (MBI), has been proven in several other studies to improve breast cancer detection and aid in the management of patients with difficult to diagnose breast tissue.

The study, conducted by Dr. Christine Teal, Chief of Breast Surgery at The George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and her team of researchers, found that BSGI accurately monitors tumor response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

According to Dr. Teal, "BSGI provides excellent specificity and sensitivity in determining initial tumor size as well as accurately reflects response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. This allows for more precise surgical planning prior to definitive surgical procedure in this population of women."

With 12 patients involved in the study, BSGI provided a precise measurement of each tumor after neoadjuvant chemotherapy prior to surgery. The researchers also concluded that the accuracy of BSGI in their study was higher than that reported for physical exam, mammography, ultrasound, MRI or F-18 PET imaging as reported in other studies. These results showed that BSGI could estimate the size of the cancerous tumors to within 5mm, and positively impact patient care with more accurate surgical approaches.  

For the study, BSGI was conducted using a Dilon 6800®, a high-resolution, small field-of-view gamma camera optimized to perform BSGI. With BSGI, the patient receives a pharmaceutical tracing agent that is absorbed by all the cells in the body. Due to their increased rate of metabolic activity, cancerous cells in the breast absorb a greater amount of the tracing agent than the normal surrounding tissue and generally appear as dark spots on the BSGI image.