How Diagnostic Imaging Benefits You

More Than Cancer Diagnosis

Imaging, by itself, is not a treatment. Its value is in helping you and your doctors make better decisions about cancer treatment. The same imaging techniques can help doctors find cancer, tell how far a cancer has spread, guide delivery of specific treatments or find out if a cancer treatment is working.

Expert radiologists at Philadelphia's Fox Chase Cancer Center use diagnostic imaging, or radiology, to benefit you in several ways:

• Screening for cancer: To determine if a person has any suspicious areas or abnormalities that might be cancerous. Mammograms are an example of a familiar imaging tool used to screen for breast cancer.
• Diagnosis and staging: To find out where a cancer is located in the body, if it has spread and how much is present. Used in this way, imaging can help show what stage (how advanced) the cancer is and if the cancer is in, around or near important organs and blood vessels.
• Guiding cancer treatments: To make cancer treatments less invasive by focusing treatments precisely on the tumors and minimizing damage to surrounding healthy tissue.
• Seeing if a treatment is working: To tell if a tumor is shrinking or if the tumor has changed and is using less of the body's resources than before treatment.
• Checking for cancer recurrence: To see if a previously treated cancer has returned or if the cancer is spreading to other locations in the body.

See also:

• Diagnostic imaging services at Fox Chase Cancer Center
• Cancer treatment at Fox Chase Cancer Center
• RadiologyInfo - Educational information from the American College of Radiology (ACR) and the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA)

For more information about diagnostic imaging services at Fox Chase Cancer Center or to make an appointment, call 1-888 FOX CHASE (1-888-369-2427).