Image‐Guided Intervention and Therapy: The First Time Right

Image‐guided targeted therapy delivery is possible through local administration of drugs, or by precise local delivery of energy to the tumor. These procedures require again smaller and smarter interventional instruments that can be controlled with a high level of precision, such as a photonically enhanced biopsy needles that can discriminate between tissue types. Informatics solutions and healthcare transformation services play an important role in enabling this evolution. The faster recovery and shorter hospital stays has helped to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease (CVD) on the healthcare system. Treatment selection is determined after histopathology and increasingly after additional molecular diagnostics. Apart from surgery and chemotherapy, radiotherapy is an important option in cancer treatment. This chapter discusses the impact of imaging on the diagnostic and therapeutic stages of the world's most common diseases that have an unprecedented impact on the modern societies.