Editorial: Optical Molecular Imaging in Cancer Research

Guanglei Zhang, Xueli Chen, Shouju Wang, Jiao Li, Xu Cao
2022 Frontiers in Oncology  
Optical molecular imaging (OMI) is an emerging technology capable of qualitatively and quantitatively studying life processes at the cellular or molecular level (1). Compared with traditional medical imaging technologies, it can detect the occurrence of diseases in advance without obvious morphological changes in the early stages of the pathological process, and can perform real-time, non-invasive continuous dynamic monitoring in vivo (2). OMI technology has developed rapidly in recent years
more » ... ng to its high sensitivity, strong specificity, and fast imaging speed. OMI technologies mainly include bioluminescence imaging (BLI), fluorescence molecular imaging (FMI), x-ray luminescence imaging (XLI), Cerenkov luminescence imaging (CLI), and photoacoustic imaging (PAI), etc, which can monitor the biological and pathological activities at the cellular or molecular level. Since the conventional OMI technology can only provide two-dimensional (2D) images, the corresponding threedimensional (3D) imaging technologies, including bioluminescence tomography (BLT) (3), fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) (4), x-ray luminescence tomography (XLT) (5), Cerenkov luminescence tomography (CLT) (6), photoacoustic tomography (PAT) (7), diffusion optical tomography (DOT) (8), etc, are also intensively explored and developed to provide 3D quantitative information. This Research Topic aims to collect multiple applications of the 2D and 3D OMI technologies used to carry out cancer studies, including studies of novel imaging systems, imaging methods, probes, drugs, and biological applications in the field of cancer research.
doi:10.3389/fonc.2022.870583 pmid:35419283 pmcid:PMC8995548 fatcat:55v3pjd2urfqjmsambla74kckq