TY - JOUR T1 - Feasibility of voxel-based analysis of amyloid-burden in transgenic mice of Alzheimer's disease JF - Journal of Nuclear Medicine JO - J Nucl Med SP - 2050 LP - 2050 VL - 52 IS - supplement 1 AU - Boris von Reutern AU - Barbara Gruenecker AU - Daniela ScherĂ¼bl AU - Rebekka Kraus AU - Alexander Drzezga Y1 - 2011/05/01 UR - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/52/supplement_1/2050.abstract N2 - 2050 Objectives First ROI-based studies proved feasibility of small animal PET amyloid-plaque imaging in transgenic (tg) mice with [11C]PiB. We aimed to establish voxel-based analysis which covers the entire brain and does not require ROI-definition or a priori regional hypotheses for evaluation of amyloid-plaque burden in small animals. Methods 11 female mice were included (6 tg APP/PS1, age: 24,9+/-0,3 months, 5 wildtypes C57B6J, age:24,5+/-0,2 months). Small animal PET-acquisition (Siemens Inveon) was carried out 0-45 min p.i of 20,5+/-5,4 MBq [11C]PiB in a tailvein, followed by MRI-acquisition on a clinical scanner (Philips Achieva 1.5T) using a 23 mm microscopy coil (3D turbo gradient echo sequence). A normalized MR brain-template was created (SPM5). PET data from 30-45 min p.i. was summarized into a single frame. The MR-template was used to coregister and extract cerebral tracer uptake in all animals (Pmod3.1). Resulting data was normalized, using the mean uptake in the plaque-free cerebellum as covariate (SPM5). A two sample t-test was carried out on this PET data (SPM5) and thresholded at p<0.05 (FDR-corrected). Results Voxel-based analysis revealed significantly higher tracer uptake of [11C]PiB in tg mice in all brain regions that are known for a high plaque-load from histopathological analysis, including hippocampus and cerebral cortex (cluster size 353 voxels, z-score 3.62). Results from voxel-based analysis reflected results from ROI-based analysis in which forebrain to cerebellum VOI-ratios were significantly higher in tg mice compared to wildtypes (1,48+/-0,19 vs. 1,03+/-0.07, p<0,01). Conclusions In analogy to protocols established in human studies, we demonstrated the feasibility of group-wise voxel-based statistical analysis of amyloid-plaque load in tg mice with acceptable spatial resolution, covering the entire brain. This approach may open important opportunities e.g. for longitudinal evaluation of anti-amyloid treatment effects by repeated measurements in larger animal cohorts ER -