The study was performed with 740 MBq (20 mCi) Tc-99m Sestamibi, the radiopharmaceutical probe used for tumor localization and imaging.

The LumaGEM Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI) System, by Gamma Medica, has been clinically proven to be an effective secondary diagnostic screening tool for breast imaging in women with mammographically dense breast whereby MBI effectively demonstrated superior sensitivity (91% when combined with mammography) and specificity (93%) results over mammography in 1,000 patients.

With recent implementations of dose reduction methods for MBI, including optimized collimation and energy acceptance window, a new Mayo Clinic study, funded by the Susan G Komen foundation, is currently underway with the objective to compare performance of incident screen mammography and prevalent screen low-dose MBI in 2,400 women with dense breasts.

In 440 women studied, 6 cancers were diagnosed in 6 patients.

MBI detected cancer in 5 of 6 patients (83%) and Mammography detected none.

The remaining cancer was detected on prophylactic mastectomy (7 mm invasive lobular carcinoma).

A follow-up mammogram at one-year for this cohort and further study of incident screening MBI will be necessary to establish true sensitivity and specificity data.