A new medical imaging technique can reveal the chemical make-up as well as the shape of structures inside the body. It provides a non-invasive way to get information about tumours or other disease sites normally only accessible by biopsy.That information can be crucial to knowing the nature of disease, for example, the aggressiveness of a tumour.Today’s medical scans, such as computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET), can yield exquisite detail of the structure of organs and tumours. But they come with the added risk of radiation exposure and reveal nothing about the chemistry of the parts being imaged.
