Beth Israel Medical Center is the first hospital in New York City to begin using a new tool -- Breast-Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI) -- to help identify cancerous breast tissue undetected by mammography.

Clinically proven effective in multiple studies, BSGI technology is particularly useful in serving as a complementary tool for radiologists and breast cancer specialists to detect breast cancer in women with difficult-to-read mammograms, such as those with dense breast tissue, breast implants or scar tissue from previous breast surgery. BSGI also is ideal for high-risk patients, including patients previously diagnosed with breast cancer, atypia and family history of cancer.

By operating on a cellular or molecular level, BSGI is not affected by tissue density and can help detect cancers at very early stages and allow for optimal intervention and treatment. Its ability to accurately detect breast cancer has the potential to significantly reduce the number of unnecessary, invasive biopsies. It also allows for accurate-pre surgical planning to help preserve healthy breast tissue.

"Mammography is still the first-line screening tool for breast cancer, but there are those challenging cases where it raises as many questions as it provides answers," says Joshua Gross, MD, chief of the division of breast imaging at Beth Israel. "Mammography primarily measures differences in tissue density, but because dense tissue and cancers can have a similar appearance on mammography, it may be difficult to identify cancers (false negative mammograms) and in addition this may also lead to unnecessary biopsies (false positives mammograms)."

BSGI is provided at Beth Israel by the Dilon 6800 camera from Dilon Technologies, LLC. According to Sheldon Feldman, MD, chief of the Appel/Venet Comprehensive Breast Service at Beth Israel, the Dilon 6800 camera and its BSGI technology, which evolved from traditional nuclear medicine imaging (scintimammography), provides a better alternative to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

"MRI results can be difficult to interpret and thus has a significant 'miss' rate," said Feldman, who, along with his breast surgeon colleague Susan Boolbol, MD, began offering the Dilon scan to applicable patients earlier this year. "MRI also is expensive, time consuming and a problem for claustrophobic patients. In comparison, BSGI is accurate and very quick to obtain, allowing a patient to receive same-day results. In addition, the Dilon camera requires no breast compression and the portable camera is small enough to fit in any breast center exam room."

Scintimammography has long shown promise as a diagnostic tool for breast cancer detection, but the limitations of the procedure as performed with standard gamma cameras did not allow for the reliable detection of sub-centimeter lesions or direct correlation to mammograms. Advances in the technology of gamma detectors has led to the progression of a functional breast imaging procedure, BSGI, that is now achieved with anatomic-specific detectors, and in this case, optimized for high resolution breast imaging.