Terahertz (THz) imaging technology for therapeutic and diagnostic applications of cancer incorporating with radiopharmaceutical fields

Radiopharmaceuticals include therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals and diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals. Therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals are administered to the body and ingested at specific organs to detect radiation emitted from the site and to construct an image to diagnose the disease. Diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals are used to treat diseases by killing cells with radiation emitted from radiopharmaceuticals, such as cancer cells, vascular endothelial cells, arthritis, and Alzheimer's disease. The application possibilities of terahertz imaging technology for the combination of radiopharmaceuticals and molecular imaging medicine are discussed and experimental methods are presented. Terahertz imaging is expected to be a powerful technique because of the effective piercing feasibility, which enables to perform safe and high resolutive imaging. To investigate the response of cell to the terahertz wave, both the pulsed and CW THz wave systems are employed. THz imaging of a rat's paraffin-embedded epithelial cell with tumor is studied in advance.