Which imaging guided procedure is done immediately before surgery to help the surgeon find a lesion?

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Needle wire localization is the imaging-guided step used right before surgery to mark where the lesion is so the surgeon can find and remove it precisely, especially when the lesion cannot be felt by touch. Under imaging such as mammography or ultrasound, a thin wire is placed into or very near the target lesion and remains in place until the operation. The wire provides a real physical guide during the operation, helping ensure complete excision with clear margins.

Fine-needle aspiration and core needle biopsy are diagnostic procedures that sample tissue to confirm what the lesion is, but they don’t serve as intraoperative roadmaps for locating the lesion. Sentinel lymph node mapping identifies the first nodes that drain the cancer for staging purposes, not the lesion’s exact location to be removed.