The New Importance of Molecular Imaging

Elias Zerhouni, director of radiology at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD, USA) in an honorary lecture at the 2002 European Congress of Radiology (ECR) in Vienna (Austria).

Thanks to high-performance computing, resolution, and sensitivity, imaging is experiencing explosive growth. Advanced image processing and analysis are enabling more information than ever before to be extracted from biomedical images. Also, providing in vivo understanding of in vitro clinical data will be fundamental to medical research in the coming years, says Dr. Zerhouni. Imaging will be particularly important in the development and monitoring of drug delivery and drug action as new targets are identified.

These new research avenues will call for novel techniques, including optical imaging, image-enabled therapeutic agents, and combined modalities, such as positron emission tomography combined with computed tomography (PET/CT). Multiple data sets combining information from different modalities with clinical data will be crucial for new research programs. Analysis of complicated data sets may also call for advanced computer-aided detection (CAD) systems, such as those being developed for use in imaging lung and breast cancer.

"The amount of data we have to manipulate is beyond belief,” said Dr. Zerhouni. "We cannot continue without CAD. We now want more information, but faster. The key thing is speed.”



Related Links:
Johns Hopkins
European Congress of Radiology