Diagnosis and therapy remain distinctly separated from each other in time and space. The gap between diagnosis and therapy can be closed by minimally invasive image guided therapies. Real-time, intra-procedural tools will blend diagnosis and therapy into a dynamic, iterative process with improved outcomes. The redefining of surgical-like procedures will be fueled by multi-modality imaging, navigation, visualization, robotics, and automated precision tools. These enabling technologies have not yet been optimally applied to existing clinical problems, especially in minimally-invasive image-guided therapies. This presents an opportunity to integrate these technologies into the clinical setting in a validated and cost-effective manner, and to study the impact prior to broad implementation.

Image guidance and multimodality navigation will fuel a small revolution in procedural medicine, which presents unprecedented opportunity and challenge. Image guidance and minimally invasive approaches have revolutionized the management of many common diseases. The miniaturization of surgical interventions has seen the broad adoption of needle or catheter-based procedures such as tumor embolization, brain aneurysm coiling, aortic stent grafting, uterine fibroid embolization, atherosclerosis stenting and angioplasty, and tumor thermal ablation with radiofrequency. As procedures are becoming less and less invasive, they are more and more targeted and guided by imaging and spatial information. The ability to navigate a medical device to a target based upon multiple windows or multiple modalities should have tremendous advantages in certain settings. The combination of functional and morphologic (metabolic and anatomic) information on the same coordinate system is empowering.

With multiple public and private partners, we have developed a multimodality interventional radiology suite that uses a CT coordinate frame to co-register different devices including pre-procedural images, intra-procedural ultrasound, gamma scintigraphy, CT, rotational fluoroscopy, robotics, electromagnetic tracking and therapeutic ultrasound, microwave, radiofrequency, etc., to allow the best combinations of techniques and guidance methods tailored to the particular patient’s needs. Combining imaging modalities can take advantage of each modality’s strength. Real-time feedback and temporal resolution of ultrasound can be combined with the functional and metabolic data from PET and the spatial resolution of MR or CT, all on one seamless platform for treatment planning, targeting, procedural navigation, monitoring, and verification of treatment.