MAMMOGRAPHY Positive features:
- Mammography can detect cancer earlier than physical examination.
- Mammography can detect tumors in the pre-invasive stage in mainly slow-growing tumors.
- Mammography is an anatomical imaging procedure and therefore has the ability to provide the location of a tumor.
Negative features:
- Mammography cannot detect an exponentially fast-growing cancer in the pre-invasive stage.
- Mammography has an overall 25% false positive rate (false indication that a cancerous tumor is present), which leads to unnecessary biopsies.
- 85% of mammography initiated biopsies are negative.
- Mammography has an overall 20% false negative rate (missed cancerous tumor) in women under age 60 – and up to 40% in women under age 50 due to breast density.
- Large, dense, fibrocystic, and/or enhanced breasts cause reading difficulties.
- Compression of the breasts during the procedure can cause discomfort.
- In most women, the medial upper triangle, peripheral areas next to the chest wall, and the inframammary sulcus of the breast cannot be visualized with mammography.
DIGITAL INFRARED IMAGING (Dii) Positive features:
- The procedure is non-invasive, and uses no radiation or intravenous injection.
- Since there is no breast contact during the examination, there is no discomfort.
- Infrared imaging (thermography) is the earliest method of breast cancer detection known. This is due to its ability to monitor the physiology (function), and thus the health of the breast over time.
- Infrared imaging may find thermal signs suggesting a pre-cancerous state of the breast or the presence of an early tumor that is not yet large enough to be detected by physical exam, mammography, or other types of structural imaging.
- An abnormal infrared image represents the highest known risk factor for the future development of breast cancer, 10 times more significant than any family history of the disease.
- Infrared imaging has an overall 90% sensitivity rate.
Negative features:
- Infrared imaging has an overall 10% false positive rate.
- Due to DII’s ability to detect the earliest signs of breast cancer, further studies are needed to follow patients over a prolonged period of time.
- The examinations produce an overall 10% false negative rate. Using this as a prognostic indicator has shown that most of these tumors are non-aggressive.
- Since infrared imaging is not an anatomical imaging procedure, it cannot determine the exact location of a tumor.
Digital Infrared Imaging’s role is in addition to (an adjunct) to mammography and physical examination, and does not replace mammography. It should be noted that neither mammography nor thermography has the ability to diagnose cancer. A diagnosis of breast cancer can only be made with a tissue sample. Moreover, mammography and thermography compliment each other, and since we know that one in eight women will get breast cancer, we must use all means possible to detect cancer when there is the greatest chance for survival.
Sources:
1997-2005 Index Medicus – ACS, NEJM, JNCI, Lancet, BMJ,J Breast 1980-1986 Index Medicus – Cancer, AJOG, Thermology 1996 Text – Atlas of Mammography: New Early Signs in Breast Cancer 1982 Text – Biomedical Thermology
