Use of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Breast Biopsy for Breast Cancer Screening

As explained in the previous article, there are two major tests to help detect early breast cancer and they are ultrasound and mammogram, there are also further methods of breast cancer detection that can be performed like NMR imaging and breast biopsy for most conclusive diagnosis and to save lives of women around the world. Now learn something about these diagnostic techniques for your breast cancer awareness.

Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging

NMR scan should be considered for specific clinical situations in which other imaging tests like ultrasound and mammogram give inconclusive results. For example, NMR can be used in the study of breast implants in patients where the ultrasound is not conclusive. Nuclear magnetic resonance scan is also used in patients having metastatic lymph nodes without identification of a primary tumor and is also helpful in monitoring patients who are at high risk of developing bilateral breast cancers.

Breast Biopsy

For pathological confirmation of suspicious lesions of breast cancer, the biopsy procedures used nowadays are:

• Fine needle aspiration biopsy (FNA).
• Core needle breast biopsy.
• Excisional biopsy.

Fine needle aspiration biopsy is a simple, inexpensive, and fast diagnostic biopsy procedure that requires an experienced cytologist to perform the procedure. This biopsy procedure has a sensitivity of 87% but this technique cannot distinguish carcinoma in situ of an infiltrant. The percentage of false negatives varies between 4% and 10% and of inadequate samples between 4% and 13%. The core needle breast biopsy and excisional breast biopsy are more complex procedures including histopathological examination of the lesion that can be examined more easily without the risk of insufficient sample or false negatives.

 Any abnormalities in the breast like cysts, lesions, fibrous growths, calcifications on initial imaging should be evaluated by clinical examination, imaging, and sampling of the lesion for histological tests or cytology. When all these breast cancer screening tests are conducted separately, they carry a high rate of error but when they are combined together to become triple assessment technique, they provide greater diagnostic confidence in breast cancer screening.