In vivo pathology: seeing with molecular specificity and cellular resolution in the living body.

The emerging tools of in vivo molecular imaging are enabling dynamic cellular and molecular analyses of disease mechanisms in living animal models and humans. These advances have the potential to dramatically change a number of fields of study, including pathology, and to contribute to the development of regenerative medicine and stem cell therapies. The new tools of molecular imaging, which have already had a tremendous impact on preclinical studies, hold great promise for bringing important and novel information to the clinician and the patient. These approaches are likely to enable early diagnosis, rapid typing of molecular markers, immediate assessment of therapeutic outcome, and ready measures of the extent of tissue regeneration after damage. However, the full impact of these new techniques will be determined by our ability to translate them to the clinic and to develop a general strategy that integrates them with other advances in molecular diagnostics and molecular medicine.