Transpathology: molecular imaging-based pathology

Abstract

Pathology is the medical specialty concerned with the study of the disease nature and causes, playing a key role in bridging basic researches and clinical medicine. In the course of development, pathology has significantly expanded our understanding of disease, and exerted enormous impact on the management of patients. However, challenges facing pathology, the inherent invasiveness of pathological practice and the persistent concerns on the sample representativeness, constitute its limitations. Molecular imaging is a noninvasive technique to visualize, characterize, and measure biological processes at the molecular level in living subjects. With the continuous development of equipment and probes, molecular imaging has enabled an increasingly precise evaluation of pathophysiological changes. A new pathophysiology visualization system based on molecular imaging is forming and shows the great potential to reform the pathological practice. Several improvements in “trans-,” including trans-scale, transparency, and translation, would be driven by this new kind of pathological practice. Pathological changes could be evaluated in a trans-scale imaging mode; tissues could be transparentized to better present the underlying pathophysiological information; and the translational processes of basic research to the clinical practice would be better facilitated. Thus, transpathology would greatly facilitate in deciphering the pathophysiological events in a multiscale perspective, and supporting the precision medicine in the future.

A novel analytic approach for outcome prediction in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma by [18F]FDG PET/CT

“…Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) with 2-deoxy-2-[ 18 F]fluoro-D-glucose ([ 18 F]FDG) is a representative of molecular imaging and transpathology [6], which has been applied as a routine imaging tool for staging and response assessment of lymphoma [7]. Several studies have indicated that PET semi-quantitative parameters, particularly maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), total metabolic tumor volume (TMTV), and total lesion glycolysis (TLG), might be independent prognostic factors in DLBCL [8][9][10].…”

Positron emission tomography in the COVID-19 pandemic era

“…Positron emission tomography (PET) serves as a representative of molecular imaging modalities and transpathology [6]. By combining with radiopharmaceuticals labeled with positron-emitting radionuclides such as 11 C, 13 N, 18 F, and 68 Ga, PET enables the visualization of biochemical changes in cellular and molecular perspectives, and thereby shows the great potential to aid in the management of multiple major Chentao Jin and Xiaoyun Luo contributed equally to this work.…”

High-resolution pediatric age–specific 18F-FDG PET template: a pilot study in epileptogenic focus localization

“…Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging provides an in-depth evaluation of physiological and pathological processes of in vivo brains and has been widely used in the investigation of neurological disorders [1,2]. The current research and diagnosis of PET imaging usually depend on spatial normalization to the standard adult brain template for tissue segmentation, voxel-wise statistics, diagnosis, and classification of diseases [3][4][5].…”