Details of an international trial using MRI for diagnosis of breast cancer is discussed below. Johns Hopkins Univeristy School of Medicine is participating as part of a multi-center trial, designed to determine the effectiveness of MRI for diagnosing breast cancer. MRI, or magnetic resonace imaging, uses radio-waves and magnetic fields to diagnose diseases. Patients are asked to lie on a table during the test, which takes about 30 minutes. They are then advanced into the MRI machine, which contains a very strong magnetic field.
Normal mammograms use x-rays to generate images of the breast tissue to search for cancer.
MRI, on the other hand, uses no x-rays. With MRI, the contrast between soft tissues in the breast is 10 to 100 times greater than that obtained with x-rays. As opposed to x-rays, which are known to cause damage to DNA of cells, the magnetic fields and radiowaves used with MRI are not known to have any long term biologic effect. The main disadvantage to breast MRI is its cost, which is about 10 times that of x-ray mammography. An additional disadvantage of breast MRI is that calcifications are not detected.