Personalized Medicine in Radiation Oncology: A Comprehensive Overview of Current Strategies and Emerging Trends

Abstract

The incorporation of genomics and precision medicine has paved the way for a new landscape in oncology research where extremely personalized therapeutic approaches are now capable of being designed depending on the genetic and phenotypic characteristics of patients. Radiogenomics, an evolving new science, is the combination of radiological imaging and genomic information that provides a non-invasive view into the molecular underpinnings of tumor biology. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of radiogenomics, tracing its origins from traditional radiology, describing its methods, and evaluating its breakthrough applications in cancer therapy. Through the application of quantitative imaging features—tumor shape, texture, and metabolic activity—and associating them with genomic signatures, radiogenomics enhances cancer diagnosis sensitivity, enhances prognostic assessment, and optimizes treatment planning. We present the end-to-end radiogenomics process from image acquisition and feature extraction to building predictive models and emphasize its translational relevance to numerous cancer types, such as lung, breast, and brain cancers. Aside from its promise, radiogenomics is also encumbered by difficulties such as the need for standard protocols, lack of data, and difficulty in combining multi-omics datasets. This article outperforms these difficulties and proposes future directions, such as the integration of artificial intelligence and multi-center efforts to drive the clinical translation of radiogenomics and anchor it in precision oncology.