National cancer institute initiative for development of novel imaging technologies

Abstract

Important advances in medical imaging technologies have been made during the past 25 years in such areas as magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, nuclear medicine, and ultrasonography. However, these advances focused largely on structural or anatomic imaging at the organ or tissue level. Furthermore, the research and development costs have tradi­ tionally been borne primarily by the medical device manufac­ turers. There are clearly a need and an opportunity now to stimulate the development and integration of novel imaging technologies that exploit our current knowledge of the genetic and molecular bases of cancer. Those molecular biological discoveries have great implications for cancer prevention, detection, and targeted therapy. Imaging technologies that can provide in vivo the same kind of cellular and molecular information that is currently available only from in vitro tech­ niques would be very useful. This is commonly referred to as in vivo molecular imaging. The stimulation of such technology development comes at a time when the resources of device and pharmaceutical manu­ facturers have diminished. Furthermore, their research and de­ velopment efforts are often focused, for competitive reasons, toward improving patient throughput or making incremental improvements in existing technologies, rather than toward new high-risk technologies. The need for National Cancer Institute