Feasibility Evaluation of Radioimmunoguided Surgery of Breast Cancer

Breast-conserving surgery involves completely excising the tumour while limiting the amount of normal tissue removed, which is technically challenging to achieve, especially given the limited intraoperative guidance available to the surgeon. This study evaluates the feasibility of radioimmunoguided surgery (RIGS) to guide the detection and delineation of tumours intraoperatively. The 3D point-response function of a commercial gamma-ray-detecting probe (GDP) was determined as a function of radionuclide (131I, 111In, 99mTc), energy-window threshold, and collimator length (0.0–3.0-cm). This function was used to calculate the minimum detectable tumour volumes (MDTVs) and the minimum tumour-to-background activity concentration ratio (T:B) for effective delineation of a breast tumour model. The GDP had larger MDTVs and a higher minimum required T:B for tumour delineation with 131I than with 111In or 99mTc. It was shown that for 111In there was a benefit to using a collimator length of 0.5-cm. For the model used, the minimum required T:B required for effective tumour delineation was 5.2 ± 0.4. RIGS has the potential to significantly improve the accuracy of breast-conserving surgery; however, before these benefits can be realized, novel radiopharmaceuticals need to be developed that have a higher specificity for cancerous tissue in vivo than what is currently available.