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Working Science

Scintimammography: New Breast Cancer Imaging Technology

by Rosalind Schrempf

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility are testing two new medical imaging devices to detect cancer and potentially reduce the number of biopsies needed in the future.

Compact scintimammography gamma camera
Compact scintimammography gamma camera

Each year in the U.S., 1.2 million women undergo biopsies to determine if suspicious findings in a mammogram may be breast cancer. While 900,000 of those biopsies are negative, every patient has had to endure the invasive and traumatic tissue-sampling procedure that has been the most accurate means of cancer detection—until now.

One of the new detection devices developed by scientists at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, the University of Virginia, George Washington University, and Dilon Technologies, Inc., is the Compact Scintimammography Gamma Camera. It is a small camera connected to a computer that uses scintimammography, a nuclear medicine method of breast tumor detection.

Dilon 2000
Dilon 2000: Compact scintimammography gamma camera and imaging device, Dilon Technologies, Inc.

Scintimammography uses standard biological radiotracers (specially prepared chemicals carrying a gamma-ray emitting radioactive isotope that can mark certain biological processes) to locate a tumor. Research has shown that several types of cancer cells take up and accumulate these markers more readily than normal cells because they generally metabolize faster.

In the past, scintimammography has been performed with standard full-sized clinical gamma cameras. The new compact detection device "senses" the gamma-rays the tumor emits and uses them to build an image of the tumor. This new detector can image the entire breast and capture close-ups of a tumor to provide more-detailed information than previously possible. Scintimammography can also differentiate with high accuracy between benign and malignant tissue. The new compact camera developed by Jefferson Lab can be used to detect small tumors that would be difficult or impossible to read on a mammogram or with the standard large gamma cameras.

Simplified schematic of imaging system
Simplified schematic of imaging system (click on image to see larger version)














This new imaging method has undergone clinical trials at Johns Hopkins University, and additional clinical trials are planned at George Washington University Medical Center. Patients who already have been scheduled for breast biopsies are injected with a solution containing small amounts of the gamma-emitting radioactive isotope. The gamma camera detects the gamma rays emitted, and data acquisition and control software converts the camera images into digital signals that show up as bright spots ("hot spots") on the computer screen. Once this system has been proven, it also could potentially be used to measure the effectiveness of cancer treatments such as chemotherapy or used to detect other types of cancer, such as thyroid.

Scintimammography scan of a malignant breast tumor (Dilon Technologies, Inc.)
Scintimammography scan of a malignant breast tumor (Dilon Technologies, Inc.)

The other scintimammography imaging device, also developed at Jefferson Lab and Hampton University, uses an even smaller gamma camera. Collaborating with Riverside Hospital in Newport News, Virginia, these researchers developed the "mini-gamma camera" to view a small region of the breast and constructed it to fit a commercial digital X-ray needle biopsy system. Using this device, researchers can obtain a digital X-ray image from the commercial system, which is then overlaid ("co-registered") with the gamma-ray image obtained with the scintimammography mini-gamma camera. In this way, the device is being used as a research tool to test the effectiveness of scintimammography to identify whether or not known lesions are cancerous.

mini scintimammography gamma camera
Jefferson Lab's mini scintimammography gamma camera attached to a Fisher Imaging stereotactic biopsy system at Oyster Point Surgical Associates in Newport News, Virginia. The system is being used in a clinical study to improve the early detection of breast cancer.


















As the mini-gamma camera detects lesions ("hot spots"), researchers simultaneously perform a digital X-ray mammogram in which potential tumors often show up as white masses. The information is transferred to the computer where the gamma imager software overlays the images from the gamma camera with those from the digital X-ray. If the two images line up, the tumor is likely to be cancer.

The digital X-ray reveals the internal structure of a potential tumor, while the scintimammography tells doctors how the tissue is functioning. To date, about 30 patients have been imaged with the device.

Development and testing of these technologies were supported through a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between Dilon Technologies, Inc., and Jefferson Lab with the support of the DOE's Office of Science, Division of Nuclear Physics, and with funding from Hampton University.

Media contact: Linda Ware, Jefferson Lab, (757) 269-7689, ware@jlab.org
Research contact: Stan Majewski, Jefferson Lab, (757) 269-7448, majewski@jlab.org ; Drew Weisenberger, Jefferson Lab, (757) 269-7090, drew@jlab.org


For more information:

Jefferson Lab's New Advances
Jefferson Lab's Medical Imaging Highlights
Dilon Technologies
Riverside Hospital
George Washington University
Hampton University

Related information from DOE's Virtual Library and the Internet:

"Breast Cancer Biopsies Could Be Things of Past," by Alison Freehling, Hampton Roads, VA Daily Press "

A Combined Scintimammography/Stereotactic Core Biopsy Digital X-ray System" IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium/Medical Imaging Conference at Lyon, France (October 20, 2000). [pdf 172K]

Conference report for Proceedings of SPIE 3115 - Title: "Development of a small field-of-view scintimammography camera: Measurements and simulations."

Abstract: "High spatial resolution gamma imaging detector based on a 5 inch diameter R3292 Hamamatsu PSPMT," IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science, Jun 30 1998, volume 45 number 3Pt1, pp. 487-491.

Bibliography of related research at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

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The new compact camera can detect small tumors that would be difficult or impossible to read on a mammogram.
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