Methods and Applications of Tumour Metabolic Imaging in the Preclinical and Clinical Setting

It is becoming increasingly evident that altered metabolism contributes to tumour progression and has been recognized as a hallmark of cancer. The cancer metabolic heterogeneity may result from genetic diversity, complex metabolic pathways, and altered microenvironmental conditions in tumours. Imaging tumour metabolism has been remarkably successful in recent years. Numerous studies demonstrated that malignant tumours could be detected with high sensitivity and specificity by imaging their increased metabolic rates for glucose, amino acids, or lipids. However, there remain emerging needs for extended studies on the metabolic dependencies of human cancer in vivo to understand how metabolism shapes and defines cancer initiation, progression and response to treatment. Several non-invasive imaging techniques can provide both functional and anatomical information related to tumour metabolism, including positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), computed tomography (CT), and optical imaging utilizing bioluminescence. These methods may hold the key to helping improve cancer diagnoses and treatments.
This Research Topic aims at collecting studies on cancer metabolism that take advantage of non-invasive medical imaging methods in both pre-clinical and clinical settings. We also anticipate further developments in metabolic imaging methods to assess and quantify metabolism in cancers in vivo. These efforts could improve tumour detection and diagnosis, and ultimately allow clinical oncologists to tailor therapeutic strategies by matching the treatment with patient-specific tumour metabolism.
We encourage the submission of article types of Original Research and Review articles. The scope of the manuscripts in this Research Topic covers, but is not limited to:
- Technique developments in the non-invasive imaging of cancer metabolism, including methods of MR imaging (such as MR spectroscopic imaging, chemical exchange saturation transfer imaging, and multi-nuclear MRI), PET imaging, and spectral CT imaging etc.;
- Preclinical and clinical studies of metabolic imaging on the understanding of the tumour metabolic pathways;
- Preclinical and clinical studies of cancer metabolic imaging on the differentiation of tumour types, grades, phenotypes, risk factors, targeted gene expression etc.;
- Preclinical and clinical studies of cancer metabolic imaging on the prediction of treatment response, survival, and recurrence.

Topic Editor Liangjie Lin is the Senior Clinical Scientist of Philips Healthcare. Other Topic Editors declare no conflicts of interest with this Research Topic.