What Is Multi-Modal Imaging?

A multi-modal imaging system is a medical imaging system that combines optical, radioactive and magnetic properties. This method of imaging is composed of positron emission topography, optical fluorescence and bioluminescence as well as magnetic resonance spectroscopy and single photon emission topography. Basically, multimodal imaging combines elements of MRI and PET scans as well as imaging tests with radioactive elements that illuminate imagery inside the body. Using different methods to study human tissue at the same time allows doctors to see multiple aspects of the same area.

Objective

• The goal of multi-modal imaging is to provide a complete picture of a specific tissue in the human body. The image should allow doctors to see anything present in that specific tissue: its size, its exact location and its metabolic activity. It should also allow doctors to analyze the metabolic activity of surrounding tissues. Thus, doctors can evaluate any abnormalities or changes in the function of those tissues as a result of a condition or a tumor or any other medical complication.

Uses of Multi-Modal Imaging

• According to Michael Moseley of Stanford University and Geoffrey Donnan of the University of Melbourne, as of late 2004, multi-modal PET scans and MRIs are used to analyze cancers and metastases of cancers around the human body, especially a type of brain cancer known as a glioma. These multi-modal scans are also used to analyze brain functions both in seemingly healthy individuals and in individuals who have suffered strokes.

Multi-Modal Imaging & HIV

• Scientists at the University of California at Davis have used multi-modal imaging to study the life cycle of HIV. Multi-modal imaging techniques allow scientists to view high-definition images of the virus starting from the point of infection and continuing through the process through which the virus uses a human body to replicate itself and destroy immune cells. Working with scientists at New York's Mount Sinai Medical School, researchers isolated the cell-to-cell transmission process of the virus.

Potential

• According to the Stanford University Cancer Institute, doctors are hopeful that multi-modal imaging may detect disease in human tissue before it develops too far. Detecting cancer by this method, they hope, will be possible through the study of just a small number of abnormal cells, rather than the millions required by other methods. As this mode of imaging is also used to study neural function, it could theoretically be used to detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer's Disease as well.