ABSTRACT
Chronic musculoskeletal diseases such as arthritis, malignancy, chronic injury/ inflammation,
and chronic musculoskeletal pain often pose challenges for current clinical imaging
modalities. There is hope that a growing field, referred to as “molecular imaging,”
will shed new light on these chronic phenomenon as it aims to noninvasively detect
special molecular and physiologic effects such as metabolism rate, specific proteins,
cell death, and particular gene-related events. Molecular imaging represents recent
advances in imaging technology, engineering, chemistry, molecular biology, and genetics
that have coalesced into a multidisciplinary and multimodality effort. Molecular probes
are currently being developed not only in radionuclide-based techniques but also in
magnetic resonance imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, ultrasound, and the emerging
field of optical imaging. Furthermore, molecular imagers are fueling the development
of novel molecular therapies and gene therapy, as tracking these efforts in living
subjects is now possible with molecular imaging protocols.
KEYWORDS
Molecular imaging - musculoskeletal diseases - gene therapy.