Hybrid Translational Imaging of Medical Disease

Dear Colleagues,

Personalized medicine is a new area of medicine aimed at improving diagnostic accuracy and reducing treatment failures. Medical imaging has progressed from the simple visualization of the human body to a primary source of analytical approaches for in vivo disease characterization. To date, hybrid imaging describes the physical combination of complementary imaging systems, such as SPECT/CT, PET/CT, PET/MRI, and US/CT. These tools provide combined anatomical and metabolic images, which are based on intrinsically aligned morphological and functional data.

The field of hybrid imaging is rapidly growing from a “metabolic only” or “morphologic only” point of view to PET with contrast-enhanced diagnostic CT or MRI, on a routine basis. Combining metabolic and imaging modalities such as PET and SPECT with CT or MRI can provide complementary information with potentially beneficial clinical applications, providing efficient diagnosis, radio-genomics, and therapy planning. Moreover, emerging novel radiopharmaceuticals are shifting the panorama of the diagnostic applications of hybrid scanners to molecular imaging, where biological probes allow disease tracking and monitoring from oncology to neurology, neuro-oncology, and cardiology.

Hybrid imaging may also adjust radiotherapy planning through PET/CT and PET/MR systems, gathering information about the metabolic activity of tumor burden and individualizing radiation therapy. This approach is especially useful for intensity-modulated radiotherapy and is expected to have significant impact in the future.

Furthermore, hybrid multimodality lesion visualization is constantly improving for targeting guided biopsies and assessing percutaneous interventions.

Finally, the possibility of “squaring the circle” by radioligands for therapy in nuclear medicine, after the precise delineation of a metabolic burden of disease, allows the in vivo systemic administration of a radiolabeled peptide designed to selectively target receptors that are overexpressed on cancer cells, with effects of disease-specific precision medicine, focused on patient care rather than the underlying disease, with a personalized approach.

Each issue listed will take advantage of an AI-based approach in the upcoming decade, i.e., in detecting and segmenting lesions, hypothesizing their potential (and grade of) malignancy, defining the stage of a disease, and predicting the prognosis.

The prospective challenge comprises a translational approach being utilized by all involved professionals: scientific

The result of this process of innovation is a new generation of diagnosticians, who gradually need to acquire

This Special Issue is dedicated to all researchers and professionals in Medical Imaging and Radiation Sciences, utilizing this translational approach in the field of hybrid molecular imaging.

Subtopics include the following:

1. Hybrid imaging in cancer assessment;
2. Hybrid imaging and infectious disease;
3. Hybrid imaging and cardiovascular disease;
4. Hybrid imaging in neurodegenerative disorders;
5. Hybrid imaging as guide interventions;
6. AI application to hybrid imaging;
7. Hybrid imaging and prognostication.

Dr. Laura Travascio
Dr. Ferdinando F. Calabria
Guest Editors

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• hybrid imaging
• PET/CT
• SPECT
• MRI
• CT
• artificial intelligence
• personalized medicine
• interventional oncology
• PRRT
• RLT