Neuroimaging studies of chronic pain.

The evolution of brain imaging techniques over the last decade has been remarkable. Along with such technical developments, research into chronic pain has made many advances. Given that brain imaging is a non-invasive technique with great spatial resolution, it has played an important role in finding the areas of the brain related to pain perception as well as those related to many chronic pain disorders. Therefore, in the near future, brain imaging techniques are expected to be the key to the discovery of many unknown etiologies of chronic pain disorders and to the subjective diagnoses of such disorders.