Role of imaging in the diagnostic and therapeutic algorithms of breast cancer

Abstract

Early diagnosis and prevention have the most significant effect on overall disease specific outcome; 90% of all breast cancer cases could be cured if diagnosed early and treated accurately. As for all diagnostic methods the most important requirement for diagnostic imaging is to detect breast cancer in its early stage, and to determine accurate tumor staging, in order to select the appropriate therapy. Its role is to monitor the effectiveness of therapy, to follow up patients reliably for early detection of recurrent disease. The spectrum of radiological imaging methods in breast cancer became broader in the past two decades; imaging that provides functional or metabolic data and whole body information such as CT, MRI and PET-CT are now available besides common X-ray and ultrasound mammography. The MRI is getting more and more important for the detection and characterization of breast cancer. Multimodal imaging techniques provide more accurate analysis, which is confirmed by increasing statistics authentically, but none of the imaging methods was specific enough to provide histological diagnosis. However, imaging-guided biopsies enable precise histological or cytological confirmation.