New Screening Tool For Breast Cancer Developed

The National Cancer Institute reports that mammograms miss up to 20 percent of breast cancers that are present at the time of screening. Doctors often recommend women with dense breasts undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is more expensive but better at detecting cancer in dense tissue.

Now doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN have developed a less expensive "molecular imaging" technique for detecting cancer in dense breast tissue using radioactive tracers. In Anaheim, Michael O'Connor, a professor of radiologic physics at Mayo, will describe the science behind this technique as well as the latest results from ongoing clinical trials, including one involving 1,000 women who all received the molecular imaging.

The technique has shown to be highly sensitive at detecting breast cancer, says O'Connor. The key now is to make sure that the doses administered are as low as possible -- equivalent to what you would receive in a mammogram. A study supported by the Susan G. Komen Foundation will begin enrolling 1,000 women in a few months to see how effective the technique is with low-dose formulations.

By American Institute of Physics