False-positives are any additional studies or examinations after screenings that result in a diagnosis of no cancer within one year after the initial diagnosis of cancer.  Breast thermography in addition to the standard mammography practices may help reduce the numbers of these false-positives.

New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope writes, “Many patients do not understand why screening for cancer might be risky. But for every 1,000 healthy women who undergo annual mammograms, about half will have a stressful false positive within 10 years, and 180 of them will undergo a biopsy.” (1)

Mammography has “an overall 10% chance of a false-positive mammogram in the US.”  says Joanne G. Elmore, MD, MPH (2)

Breast thermography “has an overall 10% false positive rate. However, due to infrared imaging’s ability to detect the earliest signs of breast cancer, further studies are needed to follow patients over a prolonged period of time.” (3)

These two screenings have the same rate of false-positives; however, keep in mind that they each excel in different areas of detection.  Mammograms, for instance, are much more successful at detecting anatomical changes and locate the precise location of the tumor.  While thermography is less accurate to detect the precise location, it can detect the development of some forms of cancer up to 10 years before the cancer can be detected via other methods.  It does this by displaying the formation of new blood vessels that feed the growths.

While neither screening process has a 100% accuracy rate, used together they can greatly increase the chance that cancers and other growths are detected while they are still treatable or before they even form.  The joint usage of these two technologies also reduces the chance of over all false-positives due to the effective “double checking” of the results.

*Note* Breast thermography is not a replacement or alternative to mammography.

1 - New York Times

2 - American Cancer Society

3 - Institute of Advanced Medicine