Breast-specific gamma camera imaging with 99m Tc-MIBI has better diagnostic performance than magnetic resonance imaging in breast cancer patients: A meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the diagnostic role of breast-specific gamma camera imaging (BSGI) with technetium-99m-methoxy isobutyl isonitrile (99m Tc-MIBI) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with breast cancer through a meta-analysis.

METHODS: Three reviewers searched articles published in medical journals before June 2016 in MEDLINE, EMBASE and Springer Databases; the references listed in original articles were also retrieved. We used the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS) tool to assess the quality of the included studies. Heterogeneity, pooled sensitivity and specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) and summary receiver operating characteristic (SROC) curves were calculated by Meta-DiSc software to estimate the diagnostic performance of BSGI and MRI. Ten studies with 517 patients were included after meeting the inclusion criteria. We did a subgroup analysis of the same data type.

RESULTS: The pooled sensitivities of BSGI and MRI were: 0.84 (95% CI, 0.79-0.88) and 0.89 (95% CI, 0.84-0.92) respectively, and the pooled specificities of BSGI and MRI were: 0.82 (95% CI, 0.74-0.88) and 0.39 (95% CI, 0.30-0.49) respectively. The areas under the SROC curve of BSGI and MRI were 0.93 and 0.72 respectively.

CONCLUSION: The results of our meta-analysis indicated that compared with MRI, BSGI has similar sensitivity, higher specificity, better diagnostic performance, and can be widely used in clinical practice.