Initial Results from National Oncologic PET Registry (NOPR) have been published recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The results provide impressive evidence for the substantial impact of PET imaging across all cancers.

Evidence-based medicine has been embraced as a practice to increase healthcare expenditures and as a tool to improve patient care, ensuring that patients receive the best resources for their care, without unnecessary and wasteful procedures. Clinical results are proving molecular imaging’s merits in a wider number of applications. 

This issue we are discussing several important topics in molecular imaging and medicine. One addresses the need for developing tools not only to monitor therapeutic responses, but also to stratify patients into the treatments that are most likely to result in significant responses. This concept can be applied not only to oncology, but also is highly relevant in patients with neurologic and cardiac diseases.

This issue features several topics of critical importance in the field of imaging.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched the Parkinson’s Disease Biomarkers Program, which aims to accelerate the search for biomarkers in Parkinson's disease, in part by improving collaboration among researchers and helping patients get involved in clinical studies.

Amyvid (Florbetapir F 18 Injection) has received marketing authorization from the European Commission as a diagnostic radiopharmaceutical indicated for PET imaging of beta-amyloid neuritic plaque density in the brains of adult patients with cognitive impairment who are being evaluated for Alzheimer's disease and other causes of cognitive impairment.

The number of students entering nuclear medicine and radiation therapy programs increased in 2012, while enrollment in radiography programs dipped, according to the American Society of Radiologic Technologists (ASRT) Enrollment Snapshot of Radiography, Radiation Therapy and Nuclear Medicine Technology Programs. ASRT reported a mixed employment outlook, with approximately 40 percent of nuclear medicine graduates unemployed after graduation.

Fully automated quantitative review of attenuation-corrected and noncorrected myocardial perfusion SPECT data provided performance at least equivalent to expert analysis for detection of stenosis of 70 percent or greater, according to a study published online Jan. 11 in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.