EurekAlert -- Doctors treating individuals with cancer would find a noninvasive method to determine the amount of oxygen in a tumor very useful, because low levels of oxygen in a tumor have been linked to a poor outcome. A new method to do this and to image the surrounding organs and tissues at the same time has been developed and used to image tumors in mice by Murali Krishna and colleagues, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda. The importance of this technical advance for furthering our understanding of tumor development in pre-clinical studies is discussed in an accompanying commentary by Mark Dewhirst and colleagues, at Duke University, Durham. As are some of the challenges that need to be overcome to develop the approach for use in the clinic, where it could be used diagnostically to determine the best treatment approach for tumors and other diseases as well as to monitor responses to treatment.
