Nuclear Medicine Imaging Allows Pain-Free Prediction of Breast Cancer
~Article by Michael Lemke

My wife, Maria Lemke, found a medium size lump on one of her breasts following a breast self-exam this year. As a result, she underwent a Nuclear Medicine procedure called a scintimammography. "The thought that I might have breast cancer was terrifying and I lost a lot of sleep before the test results came in," said Maria. "Thankfully, the results showed that all I had was a fibrous mass...you cannot imagine how well I slept after hearing the good news," she said. Maria did not want to undergo an invasive and painful biopsy, and this result confirmed that a biopsy was not necessary.

Nuclear medicine is a useful method of evaluating patients with difficult to read mammograms or physical exams and may help detect small breast tumors. Nuclear medicine's ability to provide images of tissue function, which is frequently altered in cancers, offers a way to reduce the number of women who undergo biopsies.

To perform the exam, a radioactive tracer in injected. Following the injection, a special gamma camera is used to capture images of the breast from several angles. Unlike mammography, no uncomfortable breast compression is necessary during a nuclear medicine test. The radioactive tracer travels to the breast that needs to be imaged. Normal tissue will only accumulate a small amount of the radioactive tracer. However, cancer cells take up the tracer and how a "hot spot" within the image, precisely locating cancerous tissue. There is no need for an invasive biopsy if there isn't a "hot spot." If there is a "hot spot" then the biopsy can be targeted to only take the tissue showing the disease, reducing the amount of tissue taken under normal biopsy procedures.