The most significant objectives in quantitative image analysis are to find tissue-characterizing features with biological significance and which correlate with pathophysiology detected by other methods, i.e. clinical examination, other imaging modalities and pathological-anatomical diagnosis, and secondly to provide this new information on the properties of tissues to be used alone or in combination with other clinical information find more allowing more reliable detection of disease and sophisticated tissue classification as a clinical diagnostic and follow-up tool.
Precise and earlier diagnostics and monitoring treatment response are significant both for the individual patient’s prognosis and on a larger scale in this website developing treatment
procedures, especially in malignant diseases. Within the research on solid tumors extensive and widely used Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors Ferrostatin-1 (RECIST) Guidelines may be followed to obtain intra- and inter center comparable results. RECIST defines measurability of tumor lesions and specifies methods of measurements with different techniques [1]. According to the RECIST criteria measure of tumor response from radiological images is done by measuring lesions one-dimensionally, furthermore the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria use two dimensional analysis and several research groups volumetric three-dimensional analysis [2]. Staging of non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas (NHL) is the key element of treatment planning for this heterogeneous group of malignancies. A variety of diagnostic tools, including biopsies, computed tomography (CT), magnetic Casein kinase 1 resonance imaging (MRI),18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) or molecular markers are used in pre-treatment staging [3]. Enhancement with contrast media could also
help the evaluation in using different imaging modalities. The same tools are applied to evaluate the response to different types of treatment. Novel techniques such as hybrid positron emission tomography – computed tomography (PET-CT) imaging and new PET tracers like18F-fluoro-thymidine (18F-FLT) may increase the sensitivity of response assessment [4]. Reports aiming international standardization of clinical response criteria for NHL have been published [5, 6], and these criteria are in wide clinical use. A combination of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone (CHOP) remains the mainstay of therapy. The addition of a chimeric-anti-CD20 immunoglobulin G1 monoclonal antibody, rituximab (Mabthera®), has resulted in a dramatic improvement in the outcome of the most common NHL, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, but has also been shown to effective in other type of B-cell lymphomas [7–9]. Several quantitative MRI studies have indicated that texture analysis (TA) has the ability to detect differences between tissues and subtle changes between disease burden and normal tissue.