Integration of imaging biomarkers into systems biomedicine: a renaissance for medical imaging

Systems biomedicine consists in the integration of biosciences, medicine and computer sciences. Systems biomedicine is supposed to allow a holistic approach to the human subject and its disease states. This paper outlines the basic concepts and open issues in this field and provides an outlook for the integration of medical imaging procedures in the growing area of systems biomedicine. The terms “Systems biomedicine”, “Systems medicine” were used for bibliographic search in Pubmed and Web of sciences. Most relevant papers were selected for inclusion in this paper; a synthesis of the papers is presented. An integration of methods is required to best exploit the potential of the multi-‘omics biobanks, in which imaging biomarker data represent an added value. To obtain such integration, imaging biomarker data from different “systems” should be in a manageable format. The recent evolution of AI and the hardware improvements by parallel and fast computing are bringing us towards a new age of molecular and morphologic imaging. Although there will always be a qualitative aspect to imaging, AI and quantitative metrics will supplement and complement the current “human” methods of interpretation of imaging data in a holistic approach to individual patient management.