Imaging Advances Bring Personalized Medicine

Diagnostic medical imaging has become a "guiding hand" of personalized medicine for cancer care, says Hedvig Hricak, chair of the department of radiology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

She's also president of the board of the Radiology Society of North America, and personalized medicine will play a big part of her President's Address during RSNA 2010, Nov. 28-Dec. 3 in Chicago. "Personalized medicine already is here. It's just that we need to perfect it."

That means radiologists must become players in the changing field of medicine, where among other things, molecular imaging is making the practice of medicine as personalized as the genomics revolution is, she contends. And while medicine is a life-long learning process, Hricak will call on her colleagues to redouble their commitment to continued education because the field is changing very fast. "We as a subspecialty need to continually learn and adapt to change."

The President's Address is scheduled at 10:15 a.m. on Nov. 28. More information is available at rsna.org.

--Joseph Goedert