Current Medical Imaging - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2007

Cancer remains one of the major causes of death in the Western world, and it is increasing in developing countries as well as in the industrial world. The overall costs of cancer management relentlessly increase year on year. Therefore, there are huge challenges ahead for all those involved in the care of cancer patients that include the development of new and more effective therapies and the development of new technologie Read More

The rapidly growing field of PET imaging is providing new opportunities to define target volumes for radiotherapy. For multiple disease sites, PET has become a tool to provide a way to locate the most rapidly metabolizing portions of the lesion mass and to detect unsuspected metastases over conventional CT imaging. This made PET a desirable imaging modality for radiotherapy treatment planning. In addition to improved stag Read More

The incidence of Renal Cell Carcinoma (RCC) is increasing at all stages. Thus, there is a need to develop more accurate and reliable methods of diagnosing, staging and treating the disease. The role of positron emission tomography (PET) is still evolving with regard to the diagnosis, staging and management of RCC. At present, the assessment of renal masses and primary staging of RCC are reasonably well investigated usin Read More

Objective: The last decade has seen numerous modifications in the way the prostate cancer is diagnosed. Current diagnostic methods in prostate cancer lacking the ability to predict individual patient outcome, which highlights the need for more sensitive approaches. We investigated the value of digital rectal examination (DRE), transrectal ultrasonography (TRUS) and prostatic specific antigen (PSA) analysis as aids in general cli Read More

Detection of liver metastases is one of the most common problems in evaluating patients with primary neoplasms. Gray-scale and color Doppler ultrasonography have limited accuracy with a sensitivity ranging between 53% and 77%. Isoechoic metastases and nodules under 1 cm in size may not be detectable. Occasionally, non-metastatic liver lesions can be identified in neoplastic patients which must be correctly characteriz Read More

Micro Computed Tomography (micro-CT) was suggested in biomedical research to investigate tissues and small animals. Its use to characterize bone structures, vessels (e.g. tumor vascularization), tumors and soft tissues such as lung parenchyma has been shown. When co-registered, micro-CT can add structural information to other small animal imaging modalities. However, due to fundamental CT principles, high-res Read More

Measurement of bone mineral density (BMD) with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) is widely used in clinical practice for the diagnosis of osteoporosis and assessment of fracture risk. However, variants and artefacts such as, osteophytes and metallic objects can affect the BMD results of the spine and hip. We demonstrate a spectrum of clinical examples that may impact on BMD evaluation. Recognition of such artefact Read More