Molecular imaging of pulmonary gene expression with positron emission tomography.

Gene expression imaging is one form of molecular imaging used to visualize, characterize, and quantify, spatially and temporally, normal as well as pathologic processes at cellular and subcellular levels within intact living organisms. Most studies to date have employed positron emission tomography as the imaging platform to detect, monitor, and quantify gene expression in the lungs. These studies have shown that imaging can be used to determine the onset and duration of transgene expression, the effectiveness of different gene delivery systems, and the linearity of vector dose-response relationships. This rapidly developing field can be expected to provide useful new tools with which to study gene expression in transgenic animals and in humans during gene therapy.