(Updated content from 2015-2017 is at the bottom of this article)
The prevalence of lung cancer in the U.S., and the world for that matter, is a major public health and economic concern. Attributed primarily to cigarette smoking, lung cancer is usually diagnosed well into the latter stages of metastasis, meaning the deadly cancerous part of the tumor has already differentiated and separated from its origin and into the bloodstream. For decades, one of the primary diagnostic imaging tools to uncover lung tumors has been a chest X-ray.