
A breast cancer screening tool developed at Mayo Clinic may benefit women with dense breasts. It's called molecular breast imaging (MBI), and research shows the technology detects more breast cancers in this group of women than mammography. Up to half of women have dense breast tissue.
MBI is a test that uses a radioactive tracer and special camera to find breast cancer. Rather than simply taking a picture of a breast, molecular breast imaging is a type of functional imaging. This means the pictures it creates show differences in the activity of the tissue. Tissue that contains cells that are rapidly growing and dividing, such as cancer cells, appears brighter than less active tissue.
During MBI, a small amount of radioactive tracer is injected into a vein in your arm. The tracer attaches to breast cancer cells that can then be detected using a camera that detects the gamma radiation released by the tracer (gamma camera).In this Mayo Clinic Minute, reporter Vivien Williams talks to Dr. Deborah Rhodes, a lead researcher in pioneering this tool for tumor detection.
Related Mayo Clinic News Network posts:
Cost-effective addition to mammography in detecting cancer in dense breast tissue
Mayo Clinic Q & A: In addition to mammogram, MBI useful for women with dense breasts
Breast Exam Nearly Quadruples Detection of Invasive Breast Cancers in Women with Dense Breast Tissue
Cancer affects people worldwide, regardless of age, gender or socioeconomic status. That's why Mayo Clinic joins the Union for International Cancer Control and other global organizations on World Cancer ...
BARRON, Wis. — Preventive health screenings are important for everyone, yet these simple and routine things are not readily available to some. Nothing in life ...
Cancer remains the second-leading cause of death in the U.S., but the number of people dying from cancer continues to decline. In the last three ...