ABSTRACT
The term “in vivo imaging” implies a number of techniques contemporarily used in medicine and research to visualize living organisms at anatomical, morphological/functional, cellular, and molecular levels, allowing a noninvasive detailed insight into the organisms and helping to understand metabolic processes and disease-related changes in the body. The last three decades witnessed rapid development of in vivo imaging techniques, which has had profound impact on drug discovery and development, biomedical and biochemical research, and most importantly on clinical medicine, especially for treatment of cancer and cardiovascular diseases (Ntziachristos et al. 2007; Fass 2008).
