Novel Functional Imaging for Tissue Oxygen Concentration and Redox Status

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Abstract
The hypothesis that regions of hypoxia within human tumors would limit the effectiveness of radiotherapy was made nearly 50 years ago. Likewise, hypoxia could present a problem for systemic forms of therapy such as chemotherapy because of compromised delivery of the drug to the tumor cells. However, only over the past 15 years have sufficient data accumulated regarding human tumor oxygenation status using oxygen electrodes to assess its importance. Oxygen electrode data have shown that some (not all) human tumors do indeed contain hypoxic regions, the extent of hypoxia can influence tumor response to radiation treatment, and the presence of hypoxia is an indicator of tumor aggressiveness (1). These findings point to the importance of a priori knowledge of pO2 levels in tumors to select the most appropriate and effective treatment options.