Overview and definitions on lung cancer diagnosis

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lung cancer has been the most common cancer in the world for several decades. Thus, the use of imaging modalities is of great importance in the follow up of this disease evolution according to time. This paper gives an overview of the main existing anatomic criteria used over the time for response evaluation in lung tumor. In addition, this paper summarizes the concepts of the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumor (RECIST), revised RECIST, and the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. Moreover, the correlation between the various set of criteria is presented and the advantages and the shortcomings of each one are highlighted. Further, the usefulness of these guidelines for the image processing community is also studied. We aim by this paper helping the oncology community giving the appropriate therapy procedure, forecast whether a treatment is efficacious enough to be utilized on a larger scale and provide a more efficient care for the patient.