It is not an exaggeration to say that the current success of PET has been brought about by PET/CT. Potential of functional imaging of PET has been elicited by adding anatomical imaging of CT. Replacing CT with MRI for PET is a technological trend in PET. In this article, prospective aspects of multimodal PET are briefly described.

Images acquired by medical diagnostic imaging devices are used as indicators for staging, distinguishing between benign and malignant tumors, and evaluating treatment techniques and drugs. The pixel values of images are more effective as biomarkers when the dependency on vendors, devices, cites, patients, and time are low, and the measurement repeatability and reproducibility are high. Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) organized the quantitative imaging biomarkers alliance (QIBA) to unite researchers, healthcare professionals and industry to advance quantitative imaging and the use of imaging biomarkers in clinical trials and clinical practice. In Japan, the Japan radiological society (JRS) has organized Japan-QIBA (J-QIBA) and is working in collaboration with QIBA. This paper introduces activities for standardization of elastography that images the viscoelastic distribution of biological soft tissue.

In this paper, the outline of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) techniques implemented in diagnostic equipment, trends in related research, and a group of technologies for understanding the microacoustic properties of living tissues are explained. In addition, the possibility of multi-scale ultrasonic quantitative diagnosis by combining them will be introduced.

This paper introduces micro CT scanners from the viewpoint of bridging that gap between macro and micro imaging. Also, we will introduce anatomical structure recognition in the mesoscopic area using micro CT images. Furthermore, we will show an example of super-resolution of macro CT images by using deep learning. Micro CT imaging enables us to perform imaging of mesoscopic anatomical structures, which exist in the area between micro-level anatomical structure (e.g. cell level) and macro-level anatomical structure. Intergradation of mesopic is imaging by micro CT and imaging of surrounding areas will enable us to perform scale-seamless anatomical structure. Such integration has the potential to explore new research areas.

We have conducted a research project to achieve image registration between pathological images and MR image of resected brain as a multi-modal, multi-scale image analysis. In this paper, some element technologies such as registration technique via optical macro image of resected brain and a down sampling technique based on texture analysis are introduced and the experiment with satisfactory registration results are also demonstrated.