Table 1. Advantages and disadvantages of three methods used for hypoxia evaluation in solid tumors: Gene expression analysis, PET-CT/18F-FMISO and microscopy/PIMO.

	RT-PCR/Gene expression	PET-CT/18F-FMISO	Microscopy/PIMO
advantages	1. Examination of the whole organ 2. Examination of changes at molecular level (before the morphologic changes occur)	1. Direct visualization of the whole organ 2. Evaluation of the % of hypoxic regions in the whole tumor	1. Visualization of the whole organ section on the slide 2. Evaluation of the % of hypoxic region in the tumor section
disadvantages	1. Results reflect changes in the whole organ without division on the hypoxic, normoxic, necrotic regions 2. The result reflects mean changes in all the regions above	1. Small tumors invisible	1. Results reflect only part of the tumor (just the section) otherwise it is very time-consuming if the whole organ is cut on serial sections