| Breast carcinoma is a major health problem for women. It is the second most common cancer affecting women in the western hemisphere after lung cancer and its incidence is increasing with an age-adjusted incidence rates of 106 to 110 per 100,000 women. In 1990,150,000 new cases of breast cancer were reported in the United States, whereas this number increased to approximately 185,000 cases in 2002, representing a rising rate of at least 3% per year. Approximately 45,000 of these women would die of this disease. The early diagnosis of breast cancer is the key for increasing cure incidence and survival incidence. The diagnosis of breast cancer is based on physical examination supported by mammography and fine-needle aspiration cytology or core biopsy. The increasing use of MRI and, especially, ultrasonography has improved diagnostic accuracy, but there is still a need for additional diagnostic methods, because of their relatively low sensitivity and specificity, and limitation in discriminating benign and malignant lesions.Somatostatin receptors and their ligands constitute the prototype targeting system for detection and radiotherapy of cancer. Radiolabeled synthetic analogs of somatostatin have been successfully used in routine molecular imaging of primary gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors and their metastases. To date, five different subtypes of human somatostatin receptors have been identified and cloned. The target of most imaging and therapy studies with radiolabeled peptides has been the SSTR2,...
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