Application of new imaging methods in the development of Chinese medicine

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) fundamentally different from Western medicine, has been widely investigated using various approaches and made great contributions to the prevention and treatment of human diseases. In recent years, research about quality control, safety evaluations, and determination of mechanisms of TCMs focused on the single-cell and molecular levels and applied to a new type of analysis method imaging technology. Cellular-or molecular-based imaging can directly get spatial distribution information and relative content of biomolecules on the tissue and mainly contribute to the progress of our understanding of various diseases, diagnosis, and drug delivery, to assess noninvasively disease-specific in cellular and molecular levels of living models in vivo. Will provide new tools to treat patients with TCM, and accelerates new drug discovery from Chinese herbal medicine. Therefore, this article reviews the imaging technology and its application in the research of TCM against cerebrovascular and neurological diseases.