PET-CT scans taken of a patient prior (top)
and after treatment
; the bright areas
indicate cancer.
UPMC Cancer Centers is one of the national leaders in using technology to accurately image cancers, and using that information to plan treatment using the best resources available. One of the main challenges in planning radiation treatments is that tumors are not solid in the way you might think; typically, when cancer grows it mixes with healthy tissue, making it very hard to see where the tumor ends. Doctors typically treat the entire area around the tumor; this approach gets the cancer, but it also may affect healthy tissue that is close to the disease.
Functional Imaging, as the name states, is the science of capturing what a tumor is doing, not just where it physically is within the body. Much research is devoted to the development of various functional imaging modalities such as PET (positron emission tomography), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), MRSI (Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Imaging) and SPECT (Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography).
Functional Imaging combines PET imaging with anatomic imaging (by methods such as CT or MRI) to get a complete picture of the tumor's location, size, shape, and composition. The MRI or CT shows the physical shape and position of the tumor, while the PET scan shows the tumor's activity. This information is used to plan treatment - healthy tissue, made clear by the imaging, is spared, and higher levels of radiation can be used in treating the more active areas of the tumor, improving patient outcomes.