ABSTRACT
Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States (American Cancer Society 2011) (Chapter 7). ™e mainstays of breast imaging, mammography (Chapter 1) and ultrasound (Chapter 15), rely on anatomically di›erentiating breast cancer from the heterogeneous pattern of normal tissue. However, overcoming the limitations of these modalities may require evaluating the function of the tissue rather than simply its appearance. Physiological breast imaging modalities hold the potential to improve both sensitivity as well as speciœcity of breast cancer detection. Nuclear medicine imaging of the breast, one modality that utilizes the physiological parameters of breast cancer, was developed in response to this challenge.
