Small Animal PET as Non-Invasive Tool for Preclinical Imaging

Increasingly, in vivo imaging of small laboratory animals has become critical for preclinical biomedical research allowing the non-invasive assessment of biological and biochemical processes in living subjects. Many different positron labeled compounds have been synthesized as tracer that target a range of specific markers or pathways yielding quantitative, spatially and temporally indexed information on normal and diseased tissues such as tumors. Because of its non-invasive nature, nuclear techniques also enable to repeat studies in a single subject, facilitating longitudinal assay designs of rodent models of human cancer, cardiovascular, neurological and other diseases over the entire process, from the inception to progression of the disease, and monitoring the effectiveness of treatment or other interventions (with each animal serving as its own control and thereby reducing biological variability). This also serves to reduce the number of experimental animals required for a particular study. In contrast to cell or tissue culture-based experiments, studies in intact animals incorporate all the interacting physiological factors present in vivo.