Breast-specific gamma imaging

In this project, I had the pleasure to collaborate with Thomas Meissnitzer leading to two publications. During his work at the University Hospital Salzburg, he worked as a radiologist reviewing many gamma images of potential breast cancer lesions, when he developed a procedure to improve accuracy of the gamma imaging. The two publications summarize the results and the potential application.

The first publication compared the specifity and sensitivity of breast-specific gamma imaging to alternative procedures commonly applied. The results indicate the value of breast-specific gamma imaging, due to its higher positive predictive value and specificity for the diagnosis of malignant lesions compared to the morphologic imaging modalities. The findings support the application of a single measure (relative uptake factor) with a threshold to identify malignant lesions with very high reliability.

The aim of the second publication was to evaluate the performance of the relative uptake factor to assess histopathological and immunohistochemical characteristics of invasive ductal breast cancer (IDC) cells. The analysis covered the calculation of thresholds for an easy application of the relative uptake factor. The study concludes that the relative uptake factor is useful as a surrogate parameter for histopathological and immunohistochemical characteristics of IDCs with possible impact on tumor classification, treatment decisions and prognostic evaluations.