Brain tumor
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the most aggressive (grade IV) and most common form of a malignant brain tumor. Even when aggressive multimodality therapy consisting of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgical excision is used, median survival is only 12–17 months. Standard therapy for glioblastoma multiforme consists of maximal surgical resection of the tumor, followed by radiotherapy between two and four weeks after the surgical procedure to remove the cancer, then by chemotherapy, such as temozolomide. Most patients with glioblastoma take a corticosteroid, typically dexamethasone, during their illness to relieve symptoms. Experimental treatments include targeted therapy, gamma knife radiosurgery, boron neutron capture therapy and gene therapy.
Radiogenomics
The imaging radiogenomic approach has proven successful in determining the MRI phenotype associated genetics of glioblastoma, a highly aggressive type of brain tumor with low prognosis. The first large-scale MR-imaging microRNA-mRNA correlative study in GBM was published by Zinn et al. in 2011 Similar studies in liver cancer have successfully determined much of the liver cancer genome from non-invasive imaging features. Gevaert et al. at Stanford University have shown the potential to link image features of non-small cell lung nodules in CT scans to predict survival by leveraging publicly available gene expression data. This publication was accompanied by an editorial discussing the synergy between imaging and genomics. More recently, Mu Zhou et al. at Stanford University have showed that multiple associations between semantic image features and metagenes that represented canonical molecular pathways, and it can result in noninvasive identification of molecular properties of non-small cell lung cancer .