Advances in brain imaging: a new ethical challenge

Technical advances in the past 25 years permitted substantial advances in the neuroimaging field, expanding the diagnostic and research potentials and significantly reducing the use of old invasive imaging techniques for research purposes. The safer procedures now available allow acquisition of reference data, morphological assessment and functional characterisation from healthy volunteers. However, enrollment of volunteers is still a sensitive ethical issue. Ethical problems related to informed consent, for both research and diagnostic procedures, in patients with neuropsychiatric disorders represent an additional crucial issue. Furthermore, with both functional and structural neuroimaging studies, there is a theoretical risk of violation of individual privacy. Research in the neuroimaging field should tend to increase the amount of information obtained through appropriate post-processing procedures, including multimodality image fusion, and to limit stress and discomfort.