Personalised Medicine and Medical Imaging: Opportunities and Challenges for Contemporary Health Care

Abstract

This commentary offers a contemporary perspective on personalised medicine (PM) within diagnostic radiography. PM refers to the use of a person's genetic information in tailoring strategies for the detection, treatment, or prevention of disease. Some key issues are raised in light of this new specialty and how it may affect diagnostic imaging. First, technological and commercial drivers are outlined, supported with ethical considerations. The authors then offer some future challenges that remain evident within the literature. The aim of this article is to begin to acknowledge the importance of PM, but most importantly, identify aspects where diagnostic imaging plays a pivotal role. R ESUM E Cette br eve communication offre une perspective contemporaine sur la m edecine personnalis ee (MP) en radiographie diagnostique. La MP renvoie a l'utilisation des renseignements g en eriques d'une personne pour etablir des strat egies adapt ees pour la d etection, le traitement ou la pr evention des maladies. Certains enjeux cl es sont soulev es a la lumi ere de cette nouvelle sp ecialit e et de l'incidence qu'elle pourrait avoir sur l'imagerie diagnostique. Dans un premier temps, les moteurs technologiques et commerciaux sont pr esent es, appuy es par des consid erations etiques. Les auteurs pr esentent ensuite quelques d efis a venir, soutenus par trois sc enarios qui restent evidents dans la documentation scientifique. Le but de cet article est de commencer a reconnaître l'importance de la MP, mais surtout d'identifier des aspects dans lesquels l'imagerie diagnostique joue un rôle crucial.

Epithelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition in Pancreatic Cancer is associated with Restricted Water Diffusion in Diffusion-Weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging

“…Sole reliance on molecular markers for treatment stratification can be problematic in PDAC since tiny biopsy specimens often do not contain enough tumor cells, depending on the exact biopsy technique and the abundance of the stroma, and their results are affected by the biopsy site due to the notorious tumor heterogeneity of PDAC 51 . Radio-pathological correlation studies, such as the present study, lead to the understanding that many microscopic and molecular alterations of the tumor tissue are accompanied by inter- and intraindividual qualitative and quantitative changes in radiological imaging 57 . Therefore, radiological imaging, especially quantitative imaging, which allows non-invasive analysis of the whole tumor tissue, in combination with pathological and molecular tissue analysis, could serve as a valuable vein for treatment stratification in the era of personalized medicine 51 .…”

Deep learning-based facial image analysis in medical research: a systematic review protocol

“… 20 21 This, in turn, has contributed to the exponential growth of medical imaging data and the increasing need for boosting medical image processing power to formulate diagnosis swiftly. 21 22 Compared with traditional computer aided diagnosis for analysing medical imaging, such as hand-crafted radiomics for tumour detection, deep learning methods are superior in their ability to process large quantities of medical images accurately and cost-effectively, without exerting a heavy workload on radiologists. 23–27 Evidence shows that deep learning-based medical image analysis was able to increase accuracy rates in various disease contexts, such as the identification of spinal disorder 1 and lung cancer histology, 28 classification of skin lesion 29 and chronic gastritis, 30 and the prediction of tumour-related genes 31 and vascular diseases.…”

A Survey Exploring Personalised Medicine amongst Radiography Academics within the United Kingdom

“…The white paper called for the radiology workforce to be prepared for this paradigm shift in health care and reflect on what it would mean for education, research, and practice. This has been echoed in a recent paper by the authors exploring the opportunities and challenges of PM in medical imaging in the contemporary space [6]. Similarly, Sloane and Miller [7] recently explored radiology service managers' views on the radiography curriculum and points to the need for a curriculum that is responsive to the rapidly changing technological, organizational, and social contexts of modern society and health care.…”

“…Similarly, Sloane and Miller [7] recently explored radiology service managers' views on the radiography curriculum and points to the need for a curriculum that is responsive to the rapidly changing technological, organizational, and social contexts of modern society and health care. PM in medical imaging ranges from the adjustment and use of alternative imaging modalities and exposure parameters to suit patient characteristics and the use of positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to determine tumour response radiotherapy treatment [6,8].…”