The potential role of medical imaging to support treatment decisions

Abstract

The treatment of cancer has received great advantage from medical imaging technology. This thesis project is oriented to collect the opinion of patients and medical personnel to understand if advanced medical imaging could be useful when patients are involved in treatment decision making (TDM) process. In the specific, the investigation tries to understand if medical imaging can be useful for TDM in patients affected by prostate and bowel cancer and at which degree. The project was conducted with semi-structured interviews involving medical personnel. The opinion of the patients was collected with the analysis of patient’s diaries shared on the Internet. A thematic analysis was performed to both sources to extract valuable insight about the problem. The results of the research shows that, at the current state, medical imaging is difficult to be used to guide patients in treatment decision making. In particular, the research revealed that medical imaging is underused due the difficulty to collect, organise and show medical pictures. Nevertheless, imaging is a powerful tool to help TDM in some specific situations. Body scans and other imaging techniques look promising tools for TDM, but further investigation is suggested to discover its full potential.