The future of personalized medicine comprise quantifiable diagnosis and tailored treatments; i.e. delivering the right treatment at the right time. To achieve standardized definition of what “right” means, the designated treatment location and lesion size are important factors.

This is unrelated to whether the treatment is focused to a location or general. The roll of medical imaging is and will continue to be vital in that respect: Patients’ stratification based on imaging biomarkers can help identify individuals suited for preventive intervention and can improve disease staging. In vivo visualization of loco-regional physiological, biochemical and biological processes using molecular imaging can detect diseases in pre-symptomatic phases or facilitate individualized drug delivery.

Furthermore, as mentioned in most of my previous posts, imaging is essential to patient-tailored therapy planning, therapy monitoring, quantification of response-to-treatment and follow-up disease progression. Especially with the rise of companion diagnostics/theranostics (therapeutics & diagnostics), imaging and treatment will have to be synchronized in real-time to achieve the best control/guidance of the treatment.

It is worthwhile noting that the new RECIST 1.1 criteria (used in oncological therapy monitoring) have been expanded to include the use of PET (in addition to lymph-node evaluation).

more at http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2014/01/13/the-roll-of-medical-imaging-in-personalized-medicine/

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