Use of Tomosynthesis in Intraoperative Digital Specimen Radiography - Is a Reduction of Breast Re-excision Rates...

Area of Science:

• Radiology
• Oncology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Breast-conserving therapy is a standard treatment for invasive breast cancer.
• Re-excision after initial surgery can be a complication, impacting patient outcomes.
• Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is an advanced imaging technique that may improve diagnostic accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate if digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) can reduce re-excision rates in patients undergoing breast-conserving therapy for invasive breast cancer.
• To compare the sensitivity of DBT with standard full-field digital mammography (FFDM) in this context.

Main Methods:

• A prospective study involving 100 patients with histologically confirmed invasive breast cancer (BI-RADS 5).
• Intraoperative imaging was performed using either DBT or FFDM (Inspiration™).
• Radiograms from both systems were reviewed by three radiologists to assess the need for re-excision.

Main Results:

• No re-excision was necessary in 78 out of 100 patients.
• Retrospective analysis of 22 patients indicated that DBT had an 8% higher sensitivity than FFDM (p < 0.05).
• This suggests that in 8 patients, re-excision might have been avoided with DBT.

Conclusions:

• Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) demonstrates significantly higher sensitivity compared to commercial FFDM systems (p < 0.05).
• DBT shows potential in reducing re-excision rates for breast cancer patients.
• Further studies with larger patient cohorts are needed to validate these findings.