Figure 1.

Emerging paradigm for cancer treatment. (A) The traditional cancer care pathway, in which imaging is used for diagnosis, staging and assessment of tumour response. The stage determines the treatment option: surgery for localised disease, radiotherapy for locoregional disease and chemotherapy for systemic disease. (B) The development of tumour subtyping and the availability of a wider range of targeted treatments is changing this paradigm such that treatment selection can be made on the basis of combined tumour subtype and staging. There is also an increased number of treatment options (A, B, C,…,N) which often comprise a combination of modalities and chemotherapeutic agents tailored to the patient’s subtype and stage. PET can be used as a functional baseline tool to predict response and can be used to assess early response after only one or two cycles of treatment.