Clinical utility of positron emission mammography for breast cancer screening

Breast cancer could be considered as a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in women. Conventional mammography has high sensitivity and moderate specificity in breast tumors detection. Recently, positron emission mammography (PEM) has become available for breast imaging.PEM was developed to overcome the limitations of PET in breast screening. In this study, the feasibility of utilizing the PEM method for breast cancer screening is investigated. Methods: In December 2014, PubMed and science direct were searched using the exact phrases ‘Positron emission mammography’ and ‘breast cancer screening’ in title and/or abstract fields. Of the records articles, the full-text of relevant papers was selected to be reviewed. Result and Discussion: In many studies a promising results were reported for breast cancer screening by PEM method. In the Berg et al study, the sensitivity and specificity of PEM was 93% and 85%, respectively, for index lesions and 90% and 86%, respectively, for index and incidental lesions. They also reported that adding PEM to conventional mammography and ultrasound yielded sensitivity and specificity of 98% and 41%, respectively. Conclusion: Despite the limitations of PEM method, it could be a promising technique for breast screening in hybrid imaging or as a single imaging method.

Keywords:

Breast screening , Breast cancer , Positron emission mammography