Biswal Sandip
Department of Radiology, Division of Musculoskeletal Radiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Semin Musculoskelet Radiol. 2003 Dec;7(4):317-50. doi: 10.1055/s-2004-815679.
Chronic musculoskeletal diseases such as arthritis, malignancy, chronic injury/ inflammation, and chronic musculoskeletal pain often pose challenges for current clinical imaging modalities. There is hope that a growing field, referred to as "molecular imaging," will shed new light on these chronic phenomenon as it aims to noninvasively detect special molecular and physiologic effects such as metabolism rate, specific proteins, cell death, and particular gene-related events. Molecular imaging represents recent advances in imaging technology, engineering, chemistry, molecular biology, and genetics that have coalesced into a multidisciplinary and multimodality effort. Molecular probes are currently being developed not only in radionuclide-based techniques but also in magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, ultrasound, and the emerging field of optical imaging. Furthermore, molecular imagers are fueling the development of novel molecular therapies and gene therapy, as tracking these efforts in living subjects is now possible with molecular imaging protocols.
诸如关节炎、恶性肿瘤、慢性损伤/炎症以及慢性肌肉骨骼疼痛等慢性肌肉骨骼疾病，常常给当前的临床成像方式带来挑战。有一个正在发展的领域，即“分子成像”，有望为这些慢性现象带来新的曙光，因为它旨在非侵入性地检测特殊的分子和生理效应，如代谢率、特定蛋白质、细胞死亡以及特定的基因相关事件。分子成像代表了成像技术、工程学、化学、分子生物学和遗传学方面的最新进展，这些进展已融合为一项多学科、多模态的工作。目前不仅在基于放射性核素的技术中，而且在磁共振成像、磁共振波谱、超声以及新兴的光学成像领域，都在研发分子探针。此外，分子成像技术正在推动新型分子疗法和基因疗法的发展，因为借助分子成像方案，现在有可能在活体受试者中追踪这些疗法的效果。
