New Innovative and Safer Breast Screening Tests

This link illustrates some of the newer, safer and less invasive screening tests that will be available soon for women.

Excerpts:
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A handheld breast-cancer-detecting device called iFind, the first of its kind, could be on drugstore shelves, next to the home pregnancy tests and massage wands, in about two years. In University of Pennsylvania clinical studies, iFind’s near-infrared light successfully detected unusual concentrations of blood vessels that could be feeding a tumor. Using it is similar to feeling for lumps with your hand, but unlike your fingers, the cell-phone-size device can distinguish between usually harmless, fluid-filled cysts and actual masses that should be checked out by a doctor.
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We also have Naviscan’s PEM Flex Solo PET scanner, which, when used in combination with a molecular imaging technique, may soon be able to detect small tumors in young, dense breasts more effectively than a mammogram. Advances in nanotechnology indicate that microscopic tubes will one day be used to detect cancer cells in a drop of blood within minutes.
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Comment:

I have been looking into PET scans and many combine CT scans with PET scans and they think this is wonderful. However, CT Scans involve X-Rays. PET scans involve being injected with a “short-life” radiatioactive isotope, but I think it might be safer than being dosed with X-Rays over the entire body. So I am looking for PET scan alone and ideally, really just care about the torso or breast area only… not sure if I can just limit it or if that would matter since they inject the radioactive isotope anyway.

More on Naviscan and similar technology – also called PEM or Positron Emission Mammography:

Positron Emission Mammography Improves Resolution

PEM builds on the ability of FDG (fluorodeoxyglucose)-PET to identify and characterize malignant breast tumors. While it operates like PET, it can isolate and enhance breast images better than PET scans, enabling physicians to study molecular abnormalities inside tumor cells.

Compared with whole-body PET scanners, PEM scanners can better image small breast lesions and provide better localization. Besides improved spatial resolution and higher sensitivity for radiation, it provides reduced attenuation and higher coincident counts for image production.

But the resolution is the key, says Paul Grayson, chairman and CEO of Naviscan PET Systems, a manufacturer and marketer of compact, high-resolution PET scanners. The company has developed the PEM Flex PET Scanner, an organ-specific PET device optimized to image breast cancer, which can potentially lead to detection at an earlier, more curable stage.

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Such resolution, combined with functional imaging capability that molecular imaging technology provides, improves lesion characterization compared with other modalities. “Anatomical breast imaging modalities, such as MR and CT, are not particularly good at distinguishing between the benign and malignant state, and mammography has poor specificity,” says Watlington.

The resolution is so good that PEM can image ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which is difficult to identify with modalities such as mammography and breast MRI. Noninvasive DCIS represents more than 30% of reported breast cancers. “Such detection can permit a less invasive surgical procedure to be applied in cases that might otherwise be judged to be more severe,” says Watlington.

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Comment: Once again Knowledge is Power…