Scientific - myESR.org

B1
A
B2
Over the past few months, 300 to 400 cases have successfully been investigated with this
tool. As well as being reliable and relatively cheap (400,000 euros) it is also small, which
could facilitate its installation in hospitals or ambulances.
“Optical imaging will be widely used in clinics, which is why I think it’s very important to
talk about it now,” Kiessling said.
Experts will also present their work with ultrasound (US) in the imaging of angiogenesis,
cancer and plaque characterisation.
“I did a lot of molecular MRI in the past, and I am very sceptical about whether it will
broadly make its way into the clinics within the next years because it is less sensitive
than PET or optics or even US,” Kiessling said. However, molecular agents may be used
to identify healthy tissues like lymph nodes and thus delineate pathologies by their nonenhancement.
In the long run, hyperpolarised agents may significantly broaden the
capability of MRI in molecular imaging.
Further developments in PET and SPECT should also encourage radiologists to acquire
skills in nuclear imaging. Its current use in clinics seems to be just the tip of the iceberg
and many more applications will be possible within a few years. Its refinement will trigger
a redefinition of diagnostic imaging, Kiessling envisions.
Figure A:
Fusion image of fluorescence
optical tomography and µCT of an
atherosclerotic mouse. The colour
coding shows the activation of a
catepsin-sensitive optical probe
in an atherosclerotic plaque in the
aortic arc.
Figure B:
Accumulation of VEGFR2-
targeted microbubbles in highly
angiogenic (B1) and low angiogenic
(B2) breast cancer xenografts.
The high sensitivity of molecular
ultrasound imaging to characterise
angiogenesis in tumours at a
molecular level is clearly shown.
(Provided by
Dr. Fabian M.A. Kiessling)
“Molecular imaging is already here but there is still much more potential. It should be of
big interest to the radiologist; it adds a tool to the specialisation of diagnostic radiologists.
In my opinion, the diagnostic radiologist as we know him/her now will disappear, and I
have the feeling that in the future radiologists will become universal diagnostic doctors.
They will need profound knowledge of pathologies and molecular mechanisms in order to
select how the diagnosis should be done,” he said.
However, doubts remain as to whether molecular imaging will become strong in the clinic.
Subspecialisation and training would certainly help to raise attention to the tremendous
possibilities offered by reading cellular functions. The European Institute for Biomedical
Imaging Research (EIBIR) already offers training workshops in cell imaging via its
ENCITE project. But one major aim of the ECR session is to push for the creation of
a master’s degree in molecular imaging, Kiessling underlined. “We all think that it will
change the diagnostic procedure in the future, so it is very important that radiologists are
going on with this,” he concluded.
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