The role of imaging in the detection, identification, and treatment of cancer

In April, 2015, I was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma which is a blood cancer that attacks the lymph nodes. Having recently purchased a winter home in Clearwater, Florida, in early March, 2015, I did not have a doctor network established in Florida. After having lower abdominal pains for more than a week, I went to the emergency room (ER) at the local hospital. A CT scan was done of the lower abdomen, and I was told that my lymph nodes were enlarged. During the next five days in the hospital, I had three CT scans and a renal scan of the kidneys and urinary track. The third CT scan was used to guide a needle for a biopsy of an enlarged lymph node. Six days later my Oncologist informed me that I had Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Large B cell rapid growing type of cancer. Over the next six days I had a MUGA Scan of the heart and a PET scan of the whole body. Seventeen days after going to the ER I started my first Chemotherapy treatment. Although I have little or no knowledge about medical imagery, I did spend almost forty years working for the Department of Defense researching imaging systems to detect small targets in a cluttered and noisy environment. I have also been attending the annual AIPR Workshops for more than 30 years. AIPR has been bringing together researchers from the Department of Defense, the medical community, and other application areas of imagery understanding. This paper will address some of the challenges of detecting and identifying cancer in the cluttered environment of the human body and the role of medical imaging systems that improve the survival rate of cancer patients. Imagery from the many scanning systems used to detect, identify, and monitor progress of treatment for my cancer will be shown and discussed. A history of the improving survival rate for Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma from 1960 to present and the role the imaging systems played in this improved survival rate will be discussed.