Molecular Imaging of the Lungs1

An emerging suite of new imaging techniques offer the ability to monitor and quantify molecular and cellular processes in the lungs noninvasively. These techniques take advantage of dramatic advances in both imaging technology as well as molecular and cell biology. Molecular imaging is being used with increasing regularity in research protocols, and forms of molecular imaging have found their way into the patient care setting (eg, positron emission tomography imaging in cancer). Such techniques will afford the basic scientist as well as the clinician an unprecedented opportunity for in vivo study of the lung biology that drives normal pulmonary physiology as well as pathophysiology.