Efficacy of a Novel, High-Sensitivity, Portable, Hand-Held Gamma Camera Used Intraoperatively for Identification of Sentinel Lymph Nodes With Lymphoscintigraphy

Lymphoscintigraphy is an accepted and commonly-performed procedure used for staging of certain cancers, especially melanoma and breast cancer. It involves injecting a small amount of radioactivity under the skin in order to identify lymph nodes which should be biopsied (ie, the "sentinel lymph node, SLN") to determine if cancer has spread. The study objective was to evaluate the potential benefit of a new, camera-based technology (prototype device) which allows actual images to be obtained intra-operatively in the identification of sentinel nodes.

Each device was assessed for relative node detection sensitivity (S), defined as the proportion of sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) that were identified with each instrument, with the proportion determined as the number of true positives (TP) divided by the total evaluated (N).