This type of imaging is also known as BSGI (breast specific gamma imaging).

My surgeon, head of surgery at a major medical center, has all his patients undergo this imaging on both breasts before surgery. He believes it is more accurate than an MRI. I had it done the week after my needle core biopsy. Thankfully, it showed nothing else besides the tumor already biopsied. It also gives one more type of reading on what the size of the tumor is.

This is very interesting news to me. I have architectural distortions (no mass)  only which are malignant. IDC less than 1cm.  My breast surgeon gave me my options as far as surgery is concerned but wanted me to get an MRI done before surgery because of the denseness of both breasts. She staged me at 1 and I have estrogen plus, progesterone plus and Her2 neg. I just cancelled the MRI because I know it will be very difficult for me because of joint issues and claustrophobia.   I had mentioned this new test to the my doctor. nurse  but she said not as good as MRI.  I hope I made the right decision but at this moment in time, I feel much better knowing I won't have to go into that tube. I am an older patient (over 70).

farmerlucy - I'm so sorry to be slow getting back to you but I somehow lost track of this thread.

The BSGI turned out not to be a big deal in spite of my nervousness about it.. There is no IV. You get an injection into the arm of a radiotracer which is necessary for the scan. Then you wait 10- 15 minutes for it to take effect. You are sitting while a machine that looks like a mammography machine (but isn't) does mild compression while a gamma camera photographs everything. From start to finish it was less than an hour.

Both breasts are scanned. My surgeon does these routinely prior to surgery and says the results are better than an MRI - fewer false positives. The catch is that the machines are super expensive and unless you have enough doctors or the head of the department insisting on having the machine, a cancer center or hospital is likely not to have one. More doctors have experience and feel comfortable with MRIs. I'm sure it will take awhile for this type of imaging to become very common. If I had another cancer or really dense breasts, I would want to have one done again

George Washington University (in DC) offers this technology. Interesting that I when I asked my then breast surgeons (not affiliated with GW) about using BSGI (I had heterogenously dense breast tissue and mammography didn't work well for me) I was told it was not that good a technology and wasn't better than MRI. This was probably sometime between 2008-2010. Just shows how important it is to research everything for ourselves.......

http://www.gwhospital.com/hospital-services/the-gw...

I have a friend who was seeing Christine Teal (breast surgeon) and Rachel Brem (radiologist) at GW who was being screened with BSGI and MRIs This was the reason I knew about BSGI and asked about it. Below a link to one of Teal and Brem's recent publications.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?holding=dcgwuli...

Those are some pretty impressive results from that study - The overall sensitivity of BSGI for breast cancer detection was 95.4%. Positive BSGI examinations were present in 136 of 142 nondense breast cancers and 195 of 205 dense breast cancers, for sensitivities of 95.8% and 95.1%, respectively. There was no significant difference in BSGI breast cancer detection and parenchymal breast density (p = 0.459).

Anyone know anything about its costs relative to mammos or MRI? I think I had once heard around $500 - 600 as it was being promoted as an affordable option for those with dense breasts relative to the cost for MRI.

Manu14- I agree with your assessment of the situation. To really get good care and be on the right path I have come to the conclusion that I think many in this forum have come to .....I have to figure out what is best for me by reading the published peer reviewed literature and researching things myself.

http://www.diagnosticimaging.com/articles/beyond-m...

Not sure if it makes a difference but it sounds like BSGI and MBI use slightly different cameras.From above link "BSGI uses a sodium iodide scintillator technology developed by Dilon Technologies (the only company developing such a technology), and MBI uses cadmium-zinc-telluride digital detectors developed by the Mayo Clinic."

This is new to me so I need to learn more.

farmerlucy - As for price, I just checked my files and the un-negotiated cost for the BSGI was $575. The negotiated allowed amount with my insurance ompany was $345. And my final out-of-pocket was $69.

My surgeon ordered this test prior to surgery to get as much information possible on both breasts. It was pretty simple overall and I'd have no hesitation having it done again

JohnSmith - The medscape articles I referenced above do a pretty good job of examining the differences. One has to join medscape to see them but it is free. Thanks for all your input on these boards. I really appreciate all your insight.