ABSTRACT
Molecular imaging is a multimodality approach that brings together advances in biology with advances in the technology of imaging. Molecular imaging of cancer can be thought of as imaging the key molecules or molecularly based events, which are fundamental to the process of oncogenesis and tumor pathophysiology. The clinical practice of nuclear medicine is in large part radiotracer-based functional imaging, in the sense that it is imaging of the dynamic process of in vivo physiology as the basis for clinical scanning. Gastrointestinal stromal tumor is an uncommon tumor of mesenchymal cells that surround the intestine. Changes in specific biomarkers maybe more rapid than overall changes in the metabolic pathway, like glycolysis or DNA substrate phosphorylation. From a scientific and technical point of view, the nuclear aspect of molecular imaging is moving very rapidly with many advances in biology, the development of new radiotracers, and the prospect for major beneficial changes in patient management.
