MI Professionals

Molecular Imaging Overview

Practical Uses

Molecular imaging has enormous relevance for patient care: it reveals the clinical biology of the disease process; it personalizes patient care by characterizing specific disease processes in different individuals; and it is useful in drug discovery and development, for example, for studying pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

The relevance of molecular imaging to disease are found in the following three examples:

Cardiovascular Disease
Molecular imaging offers unique insights that allow a more personalized approach to evaluation and management of cardiovascular disease conditions such as: ischemic injury, heart failure and left ventricular remodeling, thrombosis, atherosclerosis and vulnerable plaque, angiogenesis, transplant rejection, and arryhthmic substrates.

Cancer
By accurately characterizing tumor properties or biological processes, molecular imaging plays a pivotal role in guiding cancer patient management through detection, diagnosis and prognosis, staging (extent and location), assessing therapeutic targets, monitoring therapy and evaluating response to therapy.

Neurological Disease
Molecular imaging is a very important diagnostic tool in the early assessment, risk stratification, evaluation, and follow up of patients with neurological diseases. Molecular imaging is playing an increasingly significant role in neurological conditions such as: tumors, dementias (Alzheimer’s and others), movement disorders, seizure disorders, and psychiatric disorders.