Now simple, cheap nuclear medicine technique to diagnose breast cancer

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.

The Director who has been doing the highest number of Scintimammography in his institute in the country said that there are many techniques to detect the breast cancer and the most common being X-ray mammography which has been used for decades for early detection of breast cancer.

“But unfortunately the X-ray mammography has very poor specificity. The patients are asked further to undertake biopsy and Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology (FNAC) for the detection . Other modalities like Sonography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and PET (Positron Emission Tomography) are also being used for the diagnosis,” the director said.