The role of 99mTc-MIBI scientimammography in diagnosis of breast cancer

Scientimammography (SMM) is a new non-invasive method of imaging breast tumors which in various studies the overall sensitivity of 83%-95.8% and specificity of 52%-95% is reported. The purpose of our study was to evaluate the usefullness of 99mTc-MIBI SMM in our environment in detecting breast cancer and in reducing the rate of biopsy. 65 patients aged 23-70 years were included in this study. The overall sensitivity and specificity of SMM were 84.6% and 71.8% respectively. The PPV of 66.6% and NPV of 87.5% were similar to that obtained by others. These results showed that, SMM did not increase the specificity and PPV of mammography. However SMM is a useful method for evaluating patients with low suspicion or indeterminate mammographic or palpable findings or lesions larger than 1.5 cm.