Open AccessComparison of the Accuracy of Thermography and Mammography in the Detection of Breast Cancer
Author(s) -
Ramesh Omranipour,
Ali Kazemian,
Sadaf Alipour,
Masoume Najafi,
Mansour Alidoosti,
Mitra Navid,
Afsaneh Alikhassi,
Nasrin Ahmadinejad,
Khojasteh Bagheri,
Shahrzad Izadi
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
breast care
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.767
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1661-3805
pISSN - 1661-3791
DOI - 10.1159/000448347
Subject(s) - medicine , mammography , thermography , breast cancer , radiology , gold standard (test) , predictive value , biopsy , cancer , gynecology , physics , infrared , optics
Background: Benefits and harms of screening mammography have been disputed in recent years. This fact, along with the limitations of mammography as well as its unavailability in all our medical centers, tempted us to evaluate the accuracy of thermography in detecting breast abnormalities. Patients and Methods: All patients who were candidates for breast biopsy were examined by both mammography and thermography before tissue sampling in a referral center between January 2013 and January 2014. We defined sensitivities and specificities, and positive predictive values (PPVs) and negative predictive values (NPVs), of the 2 modalities in comparison with histologic results as the gold standard. Results: 132 patients were included. The median age of all patients was 49.5 ± 10.3 years (range 24-75 years). The sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, and accuracy for mammography were 80.5%, 73.3%, 85.4%, 66.0%, and 76.9%, respectively, whereas for thermography the figures were 81.6%, 57.8%, 78.9%, 61.9%, and 69.7%, respectively. Conclusion: Our study confirms that, at the present time, thermography cannot substitute for mammography for the early diagnosis of breast cancer.