Lung cancer represents an increasingly frequent cancer diagnosis worldwide. An increasing awareness on smoking cessation as an important mean to reduce lung cancer incidence and mortality, an increasing number of therapy options and a steady focus on early diagnosis and adequate staging have resulted in a modestly improved survival. For early diagnosis and precise staging, imaging, especially positron emission tomography combined with CT (PET/CT), plays an important role. Other functional imaging modalities such as dynamic contrast-enhanced CT (DCE-CT) and diffusion-weighted MR imaging (DW-MRI) have demonstrated promising results within this field. The purpose of this review is to provide the reader with a brief and balanced introduction to these three functional imaging modalities and their current or potential application in the care of patients with lung cancer.
Keywords: diagnosis; diffusion magnetic resonance imaging/methods; lung neoplasms/diagnosis; neoplasm staging; positron emission tomography and computed tomography/methods; tomography, x-ray computed/methods.
© 2013 The Authors. Clinical Physiology and Functional Imaging published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Scandinavian Society of Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine.