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By Melissa Marino | Photograph by Dean Dixon
For most of human history, cancer remained largely hidden from view. Unless the tumor could be felt (breast cancer) or seen (skin cancer), this imperceptible intruder lurked quietly inside the body until its spread ultimately led to the death of the patient.
With the discovery of radiation and X-rays in the late 1800s, cancer began to come out of the shadows. For more than 50 years, X-rays remained one of the only noninvasive ways to see inside the body.
Today there are many ways to track down this hidden killer, including X-ray, CT, MRI, ultrasound, and nuclear medicine modalities like PET.
While these imaging methods are indispensable to cancer diagnosis, treatment and follow-up, making true progress against this disease will require more refined, detailed views of cancer. Researchers in the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center and Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS) are working together to develop more sensitive and informative imaging technologies that not only provide the location and size of tumors, but reveal the inner biology and behavior of cancer.
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