Breast MRI is Useful for Detecting Cancer: Research

• Breast MRI has been found more effective than screening mammography for detecting breast cancers more easily.
• The study was published in the journal Radiology of the Radiological Society of North America.
• Screening mammography effectively detects up to 98% of cancer in fatty breasts. Breast MRI was found to be more effective than other standard ultrasound screening techniques (RSNA).
• Dense breasts are more likely to miss screening for breast cancer, this is because, screening mammography is unable to perform well on dense breasts and cannot trace cancer, giving false assurance.
• Meta-analysis has shown that out of 1,32,166 patients with dense breasts, a total of 541 breast cancers that were initially missed on mammography were detected with supplemental screening methods.

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• The study aimed to evaluate the role of different supplementary screening tests in women with the average or intermediate risk of breast cancer who had a negative screening mammogram.
• "Breast cancer masses appear white on a mammogram, and dense tissue also appears white, which makes finding breast cancers within dense breast tissue harder for radiologists", says Vivianne Freitas, staff radiologist at the Joint Department of Medical Imaging in Toranto.
• MRI is found to be superior in terms of cancer detection as compared to hand-held ultrasound, automated ultrasound, and digital breast tomosynthesis.
• More research will be conducted to demonstrate the efficacy of breast MRI in cancer detection and the wider applications of breast MRI in women. 

Source: ET Healthworld