Functional lung imaging: emerging methods to visualize regional pulmonary physiology 1

Abstract

This is a particularly exciting era for thoracic imaging. Rapidly evolving technical advances in CT and MR are enabling increasingly sophisticated capabilities for pulmonary functional imaging. Such functional methods were formerly largely limited to radionuclide scanning. A great advantage of these imaging techniques is their ability to provide information on regional lung function, including ventilation/perfusion, spirometric, and biomechanical parameters. The ability of these imaging techniques to spatially map these functional parameters throughout each lung individually represents a significant advantage over traditional pulmonary function tests (PFTs), which are limited to more global measures of total lung function. Moreover, the new imaging methods, which provide high spatial and temporal resolution, allow for direct correlation of regional lung function with the underlying morphologic changes. Included in this issue of Academic Radiology is a collection of articles on pulmonary functional imaging, selected from presentations given at the First International Workshop on Pulmonary Functional Imaging, which was held in June, 2002 in Philadelphia. This workshop brought together a multi-disciplinary group of researchers and clinicians from pulmonary medicine, thoracic surgery, radiology, nuclear medicine, anesthesiology, pharmacol-