REVIEWS  CHARACTERIZATION OF TUMOR HYPOXIA: ADVANCED IMAGING AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THERAPY 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2013 September;57(3):257-70

Copyright © 2013 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Imaging hypoxia in tumours with advanced MRI

Price J. M. ¹, Robinson S. P. ¹, Koh D. M. ^{1, 2} ✉

¹ Cancer Research UK and EPSRC Cancer Imaging Centre, Division of Radiotherapy and Imaging, Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, UK; ² Department of Radiology Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, UK

Tumour hypoxia results in biological alterations that leads to a more aggressive disease phenotype and is associated with resistance to treatment. In this review, we discuss current magnetic resonance imaging techniques, which can be applied to evaluate tumour hypoxia, highlighting the principles of each technique, their pre-clinical and clinical deployment, as well as their strengths and limitations. The potential to combine these techniques, and also with other imaging modalities (e.g., PET imaging) using a multiparametric approach, may further improve our understanding of the complex interaction of vascular supply, oxygen diffusion and tissue metabolism in pathogenesis of tumour hypoxia; and its reversal with treatment.