Advantages And Disadvantages Of Molecular Imaging

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According to E.A. Zerhouni, MD, former director of the National Institutes of Health has described molecular imaging as having “the potential to define itself as a core interdisciplinary science for extracting spatially and temporally resolved biological information at all physical scales from Angstroms to microns to centimeters in intact biological systems.” (Eugene P. Pendergrass New Horizons Lecture, Radiological Society of North America meeting, 2007)1. Molecular imaging aims at developing imaging instruments, imaging probes, assays, and quantification methods. Imaging can be done using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), X-ray computed tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and optical (bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging)etc. The process of imaging can be elucidated as below:

The use of “labels” in imaging has many disadvantages including2, 3, 4, 5:
• Labeling produces undesirable and unanticipated interactions which compromise imaging data and lead to false conclusions.
• In case of cell based labeling assays the use of genetically modified cell lines alters cellular behavior.
• The use of contrast-enhancing labels, or fluorescent dyes damage the cells or interfere with their function.
• Labeling leads to modification of molecule of interest which causes changes in the properties of the specific biomolecule under study.
• Labeling strategies have synthetic challenges, multiple label issues and may exhibit interference with the binding site under study.
• The added fluorophores themselves are subject to photobleaching, limiting imaging time.
Label free detection/imaging techniques unlike label-based detection methods, avoid any tagging of the query...

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...ion with endoscopy.”6

REFERENCES:
1. Cited in J Nucl MED; 49:25N-26N, 2008
2. Amy Swinderman Label-free: The way to be? 2011 http://www.ddnnews.com 3. Dr.John Comley, Progress in the Implementation of Label-Free Detection,
Drug Discovery, World Summer2008, http://www.ddw-online.com
4. Ray, S., Mehta, G., Srivastava, S. Label-free detection techniques for protein microarrays: Prospects, merits and challenges. Proteomics 2010, 10, 731-748
5. Freudiger, C.W. et al. Label-free biomedical imaging with high sensitivity by stimulated Raman scattering microscopy.
Science 322, 1857–1861 (2008), and (116, Vol.6 no.2, 2009, nature
Methods- imaging goes label-free).

6. Andrew Downes and Alistair Elfick, Sensors 2010, 10, 1871-1889; doi: 10.3390/s100301871, Raman Spectroscopy and Related Techniques in Biomedicine.

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