Abstract
Dedicated small animal positron emission tomography (PET) systems are increasingly prevalent in industry (e.g. for preclinical drug development) and biological research. Such systems permit researchers to perform animal studies of a longitudinal design characterised by repeated measurements in single animals. With the advent of commercial systems, scanners have become readily available and increasingly popular. As a consequence, technical specifications are becoming more diverse, making scanner systems less broadly applicable. The investigator has, therefore, to make a decision regarding which type of scanner is most suitable for the intended experiments. This decision should be based on gantry characteristics and the physical performance. The first few steps have been taken towards standardisation of the assessment of performance characteristics of dedicated animal PET systems, though such assessment is not yet routinely implemented. In this review, we describe current methods of evaluation of physical performance parameters of small animal PET scanners. Effects of methodologically different approaches on the results are assessed. It is underscored that particular attention has to be paid to spatial resolution, sensitivity, scatter fraction and count rate performance. Differences in performance measurement methods are described with regard to commercially available systems, namely the Concorde MicroPET systems P4 and R4 and the quad-HIDAC. Lastly, consequences of differences in scanner performance parameters are rated with respect to applications of small animal PET.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Tournai MP, Jaszcak RJ, Turkington TG, Coleman RE. Small-animal PET: advent of a new era of PET research. J Nucl Med 1999;40:1176–8.
Cherry SR. Fundamentals of positron emission tomography and applications in preclinical drug development. J Clin Pharmacol 2001;41:482–91.
Chatziioannou AF. Molecular imaging of small animals with dedicated PET tomographs. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2002;29:98–114.
Myers R, Hume S. Small animal PET. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol 2002;12:545–55.
Hume SP, Myers R. Dedicated small animal scanners: a new tool for drug development? Curr Pharm Design 2002;8:1497–511.
Karp JS, Daube-Witherspoon ME, Hoffman EJ, et al. Performance standards in positron emission tomography. J Nucl Med 1991;32:2342–50.
National Electrical Manufacturers Association. NEMA Standards Publication NU 2-1994: performance measurements of positron emission tomographs. Washington: National Electrical Manufacturers Association; 1994.
Daube-Witherspoon ME, Karp JE, Casey ME, et al. PET performance measurements using the NEMA NU 2-2001 standard. J Nucl Med 2002;43:1398–409.
National Electrical Manufacturers Association. NEMA Standards Publication NU 2-2001: performance measurements of positron emission tomographs. Rosslyn: National Electrical Manufacturers Association; 2001.
Tai YC, Chatziioannou A, Siegel S, et al. Performance evaluation of the microPET P4: a PET system dedicated to animal imaging. Phys Med Biol 2001;46:1845–62.
Knoess C, Siegel S, Smith A, et al. Performance evaluation of the microPET R4 scanner for rodents. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2003;30:737–47.
Jeavons AP, Chandler RA, Dettmar CAR. A 3D HIDAC-PET camera with sub-millimetre resolution for imaging small animals. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1999;46:468–73.
Missimer J, Madi Z, Honer M, Keller C, Schubiger A, Ametamey SM. Performance evaluation of the 16-module quad-HIDAC small animal PET camera. Phys Med Biol 2004;49:2069–81.
Bloomfield PM, Rajeswaran S, Spinks TJ, et al. The design and physical characteristics of a small animal positron emission tomograph. Phys Med Biol 1995;40:1105–26.
Bloomfield PM, Myers R, Hume SP, et al. Three-dimensional performance of a small-diameter positron emission tomograph. Phys Med Biol 1997;42:389–400.
Watanabe M, Okada H, Shimizu K, et al. A high resolution animal PET scanner using compact PS-PMT detectors. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1997;44:1277–82.
Weber S, Herzog H, Cremer M, et al. Evaluation of the TierPET system. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1999;46:1177–83.
Weber S, Bauer A, Herzog H, et al. Recent results of the TierPET scanner. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 2000;47:1665–9.
Ziegler SI, Pichler BJ, Boening G, et al. A prototype high-resolution animal positron tomograph with avalanche photodiode arrays and LSO crystals. Eur J Nucl Med 2001;28:136–43.
Siegel S, Vaquero JJ, Aloj L, et al. Initial results from a PET/planar small animal imaging system. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1999;46:571–5.
Lecomte R, Cadorette J, Rodrigue S, et al. Initial results from the Sherbrooke avalanche photodiode positron tomograph. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1996;43:1952–7.
Bruyndonckx P, Liu X, Tavernier S, Zhang S. Performance study of a 3D small animal PET scanner based on BaF2 crystals and a photo sensitive wire chamber. Nucl Instrum Methods A 1997;392:407–13.
Chatziioannou AF, Cherry S, Shao Y, et al. Performance evaluation of microPET: a high resolution lutetium oxyorthosilicate PET scanner for animal imaging. J Nucl Med 1999;40:1164–75.
Di Domenico G, Motta A, Zavattini G, et al. Characterization of the Ferrara animal PET scanner. Nucl Instrum Methods A 2002;477:505–508.
Bruyndonckx P, Xuan L, Rajeswaran S, Smolik W, Tavernier S, Shuping Z. Design and physical characteristics of a small animal PET using BaF2 crystals and a photosensitive wire chamber. Nucl Instrum Methods A 1996;382:589–600.
Kinahan PE, Rogers JG. Analytic 3D image reconstruction using all detected events. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1989;36:964–8.
Defrise M, Kinahan P. Data acquisition and image reconstruction for 3D PET. In: Bendriem B, Townsend DW, editors. The theory and practice of 3D PET. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic; 1998. p 11–53.
Defrise M, Kinahan PE, Townsend D, Michel C, Sibomana M, Newport DF. Exact and approximate rebinning algorithms for 3-D PET data. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 1997;16:145–58.
Liow JS, Strother SC. The convergence of object-dependent resolution in maximum likelihood based tomographic resolution. Phys Med Biol 1993;38:55–70.
Bailey DL, Jones T, Spinks TJ. A method for measuring the absolute sensitivity of positron emission tomographic scanners. Eur J Nucl Med 1991;18:374–9.
Strother SC, Casey ME, Hoffman EJ. Measuring PET scanner sensitivity: relating countrates to image signal-to-noise ratios using noise equivalent counts. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1990;37:783–8.
Badawi RD, Marsden PK, Cronin BF, Sutcliffe JL, Maisey MN. Optimization of noise-equivalent count rates in 3D PET. Phys Med Biol 1996;41:1755–76.
Melcher CL, Schweitzer JS. Cerium-doped lutetium oxyorthosilicate: a fast, efficient new scintillator. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 1992;39:502–5.
Reader AJ, Allay S, Bakatselos F, et al. One-pass list-mode EM algorithm for high resolution 3D PET image reconstruction into large arrays. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 2002;49:693–9.
Myers R, Hume S, Bloomfield P, Jones T. Radio-imaging in small animals. J Psychopharmacol 1999;13:352–7.
Myers R. The biological application of small animal PET imaging. Nucl Med Biol 2001;28:585–93.
Cherry SR. Fundamentals of positron emission tomography and applications in preclinical drug development. J Clin Pharmacol 2001;41:482–91.
Rowland DJ, Lewis JS, Welch MJ. Molecular imaging: the application of small animal positron emission tomography. J Cell Biochem 2002;39(Suppl):110–5.
Herschman HR. Micro-PET imaging and small animal models of disease. Curr Opin Immunol 2003;15:378–84.
Hume SP, Gunn RN, Jones T. Pharmacological constraints associated with positron emission tomographic scanning of small laboratory animals. Eur J Nucl Med 1998;25:173–6.
Phelps ME, Hoffman EJ, Huang SC, Ter-Pogossian M. Effect of positron range on spatial resolution. J Nucl Med 1975;16:649–52.
Cho ZH, Chan JK, Ericksson L, et al. Positron ranges obtained from biomedically important positron-emitting radionuclides. J Nucl Med 1975;16:1174–6.
Derenzo SE. Precision measurement of annihilation point spread distributions for medically important positron emitters. In: Hasiguti RR, Fujiwara K, editors. Positron annihilation. Sendai: The Japan Institute of Metals; 1979. p 819–23.
Palmer RP, Brownell GL. Annihilation density distribution calculations for medically important positron emitters. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 1992;11:373–8.
Sanchez-Crespo A, Andreo P, Larsson SA. Positron flight in human tissues and its influence on PET image spatial resolution. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 2004;31:44–51.
Levin CS, Hoffman EJ. Calculation of positron range and its effect on the fundamental limit of positron emission tomography system spatial resolution. Phys Med Biol 1999;44:781–99.
Laforest R, Rowland DJ, Welch MJ. microPET imaging with nonconventional isotopes. IEEE Trans Nucl Sci 2002;49:2119–26.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank H.H. Coenen, Institute of Nuclear Chemistry, Research Center Jülich, as well as W. Enghardt, Research Center Rossendorf, Germany, representing the consortium radiochemistry/radiopharmacy, for valuable discussions. We would also like to thank Horst Halling, Central Institute for Electronics, Research Center Jülich, for his helpful comments on this manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Weber, S., Bauer, A. Small animal PET: aspects of performance assessment. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 31, 1545–1555 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-004-1683-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-004-1683-x