Abstract
The increasing incidence of breast cancer worldwide raises the importance of improving imaging techniques for disease stratification after early lesion detection. SPECT/CT imaging is now widely available but its diagnostic potential is not fully utilized for more specific purposes including breast cancer patient stratification. A Pubmed search for both original and review articles related to the value of SPECT/CT in breast cancer patients and comparison to other diagnostic methods. 62 articles were found using the key words SPECT/CT, Fusion Image and Breast Cancer. Development of a new generation of SPECT/CT systems and their introduction into practice has changed the old diagnostic algorithm. The increasing importance of SPECT/CT in the detection of bone metastases is confirmed. The diagnostic accuracy of new SPECT/CT instruments in the diagnostics of bone metastases is nearly comparable to PET/CT scans. SPECT/CT is more widely available and costs less than PET. It is able not only to identify a sentinel lymph nodes in atypical localizations but also to detect sentinel lymph nodes non visualized on previous planar scans. SPECT/CT offers precise anatomic localization of sentinel lymph nodes, thereby facilitating surgery. Knowledge of precise sentinel lymph node localization can also be applied in radiotherapy. The role of hybrid SPECT/CT imaging in breast cancer patients is changing. It is a powerful modality for skeletal and nodal staging in breast cancer patients with important impact on therapy.
Highlights
The increasing incidence of breast cancer worldwide raises the importance of improvements in imaging techniques for disease stratification after early lesion detection.Bone scintigraphy has been used for skeletal staging and has high sensitivity
We focused on the hybrid device SPECT/CT only in this article, not on the software based offline image fusion
Evaluation of CT image of sentinel lymph nodes (SLN) SPECT/CT can alert physicians to the possibility of the metastatic involvement of lymph nodes in the axilla depending on their shape and size[51,52]
Summary
The increasing incidence of breast cancer worldwide raises the importance of improving imaging techniques for disease stratification after early lesion detection. SPECT/CT imaging is widely available but its diagnostic potential is not fully utilized for more specific purposes including breast cancer patient stratification. A Pubmed search for both original and review articles related to the value of SPECT/CT in breast cancer patients and comparison to other diagnostic methods. 62 articles were found using the key words SPECT/CT, Fusion Image and Breast Cancer. The increasing importance of SPECT/CT in the detection of bone metastases is confirmed. SPECT/CT offers precise anatomic localization of sentinel lymph nodes, thereby facilitating surgery. The role of hybrid SPECT/CT imaging in breast cancer patients is changing. It is a powerful modality for skeletal and nodal staging in breast cancer patients with important impact on therapy.
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