July 16, 2012 — According to a new study by Korean researchers at the Ewha Women's Hospital in Seoul, published this year in the Annals of Nuclear Medicine, molecular breast imaging (MBI), also known as BSGI, may be a better choice than magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for women who have a new cancer diagnosis and dense breast tissue detected by mammography. According to their results, MBI/BSGI and MRI had nearly the same sensitivity for the detection of additional malignant tumors, but MBI/BSGI was much less likely to be positive in benign lesions.
In their work, Dr. Kim and his colleagues evaluated 66 patients who had a new breast cancer diagnosis and a reported mammography breast density of greater than 50 percent with MBI/BSGI and MRI prior to surgery. Both MBI/BSGI and MRI detected disease not seen by mammography; however, the MBI/BSGI was more accurate than MRI in determining if lesions were benign or malignant.
Only 26 percent of the additional lesions detected by MRI were malignant compared to MBI/BSGI, where 76 percent of the lesions detected were malignant. This is important for the newly diagnosed breast cancer patient since biopsy is required when imaging studies are positive. Therefore, MBI/BSGI could have led to a large decrease in the number of unnecessary biopsies for women in this trial. "The results of this study suggest that MBI/BSGI could play a crucial role as an adjunctive imaging modality which can be used to evaluate breast cancer patients with dense breasts," said Dr. Kim.
For more information: www.molecularbreastimaging.com
January 28, 2026 
