[Current Status and Future Perspectives of the Navigation Surgery in Breast Cancer - The Clinical Utility of Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy Using ICG].

Sentinel lymph node biopsy is the standard of care for breast cancer. The detection method using radioisotope(RI)is considered the standard method but has some drawbacks including radiation exposure and access of the nuclear medicine to RI. A novel method using indocyanine green(ICG)as a near infrared(NIR)fluorescence contrast agent was developed in Japan. This NIR fluorescence imaging system can visualize subcutaneous lymphatic channels in real-time and navigate the surgeon to harvest sentinel lymph node in the axillary basin. Accumulating results in previous studies demonstrated that the ICG fluorescence method has achieved a high detection rate of sentinel lymph node comparable with the RI method. Currently, the ICG fluorescence method is another standard method as an acceptable alternative to the RI method. Development of fluorescence tracer to visualize tumor cells may enable the novel navigation surgery using in vivo fluorescence imaging.