A recent Medscape publication (a continuing education piece made into a quiz) about modern breast screening recommendations for clinicians called Raising the Bar on Breast Cancer Screening and Management sheds interesting light on the “gold standard” of screening: mammogram. Basically it concludes that if one wants to know what is truly happening, MRI is the best tool, though they do not mention counseling patients about the risk of the gadolinium contrast ending up in the brain nor the common allergy to the contrast agent. (Of course the Cinderella of Screening, Thermography, isn’t even invited to the conversation, possibly because it would be such a profit crushing blow in stopping treatment of lesions that are not actually cancerous and not destined to become cancer?)
MRI is also the tool most likely to see what Thermography sees as they both are able to visualize blood flow and blood flow in suspicious patterns can be indicative of angiogenesis, the formation of blood flow specifically for the purpose of feeding a tumor.
Multiple models, and some surprising risk factors get revealed when answers to the quizzes are shown as one completes them. Very educational for me! Hope you enjoy it too.
P.S. BTW, Dr. Amalu, interpreter of our images, is of course a huge fan of thermography and his second choice of imaging modality is MRI, for the very reasons stated above, i.e., it is most able to see what thermal imaging sees, excess blood flow, …. (not cold, “turtles”).