surveillance scanning
surveillance scanning
The use of various imaging modalities (e.g., CT and MRI) to detect and follow patients with certain diseases (e.g., brain tumours), based on the assumptions that(1) Tumours may recur either without symptoms, or long before symptoms appear; and
(2) Early management of those tumours will improve survival.
For many tumours (e.g., medulloblastomas in children), while tumour recurrences are detected earlier with surveillance scanning, early treatment does not improve survival.