Recent Advances in Medical Radiation Technology

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About this Research Topic

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Background

Personalized medicine and early diagnosis are being increasingly used in hospitals and clinical settings and are part of the most promising tools in current healthcare trends. In particular, many pharmaceutical companies develop and offer personalized healthcare solutions. Advances in medical radiation technology have profoundly affected medicine. Continued progress in this area for over a century had led to the emergence of innovations medical diagnosis and therapy that have completely reconfigured the identification and imaging of pathologies and the treatment of disease. There are two types of radiation, namely ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Non-ionizing radiation comprises the electromagnetic spectrum portion, such as microwave (MW), infrared (IR), ultra-violet (UV) and visible light, for which the energy is sufficient only to enable excitation, but not enough to cause ionisation. Ionizing radiation consists of high-energy radiation including electromagnetic radiation (gamma rays and X-rays) and particulate radiation (i.e. α, β and neutron particles from radionuclides).

For more than a century, the enthusiasm for the medical use of ionizing and non-ionizing radiation therapy, either alone or in combination with other modalities (e.g., chemotherapy, immunotherapy) has continued to grow. This Research Topic is devoted to publishing original research and high-quality review articles relevant to recent advances in medical radiation technology, which covered topics ranging from radiation therapy to radiation diagnosis or with a combination of both (i.e., theranostic approach such as image-guided radiation therapy) using ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Radiation therapy topics, which will be discussed can include PDT, PTT, photoimmunotherapy (PIT), photochemotherapy (PCT), RT, radioimmunotherapy (RIT), radionuclide therapy and other therapies using, among others, UV, NIR, X-ray, Cerenkov, and radioactive radiation. As to the content of the “radiation diagnosis” topics, this may include, but is not limited to, computed tomography (CT), PET and SPECT imaging, but also PET/CT and SPECT/CT hybrid imaging using, among others, X-ray, and radioactive radiation.

We welcome original research and high-quality review articles relevant to recent advances in medical radiation technology, which cover topics ranging from radiation therapy to radiation diagnosis or with a combination of both using ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.

• Medical radiation therapy and/or diagnosis (ionizing and non-ionizing)
• (Nano)materials for diagnostic or/and therapeutic radiation application
• Advances in PDT and other radiation therapies
• Advances in nuclear medicine (radiopharmaceuticals and medical radiochemistry) for diagnosis and therapy
• Novel conjugation strategies for bio-targeting
• Targeted therapy
• Recent trends in biotargeting
• Advances in earlier radiation diagnosis
• Multimodal probes
• Theranostic agents for medical radiation technology

Topic Editor Michael Hamblin holds shares in Niraxx Light Therapeutics Inc, Irvine CA and JelikaLite Corp, New York NY. Topic Editor Sanjay Malhotra is the co-founder of Arxeon, Inc. The other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regard to the Research Topic subject.

Keywords: Non-ionizing radiation, ionizing radiation therapy and diagnosis, theranostics, radiation medicine

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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