Editorial point of viewHigh-resolution molecular imaging techniques for cardiovascular research
Section snippets
Dimensions of small animals relative to human beings
To appreciate the difficulty and the immense challenge facing high-resolution molecular imaging, we need first to appreciate the dimensions of human beings relative to small animal molecular imaging. For a typical normal healthy human being, the chest width is approximately 36 cm, as compared with approximately 5 cm for a 300-g rat and approximately 2.5 cm for a typical 25-g mouse. That is, the relative size of a rat is approximately 7 times smaller than that of human beings, and that of a
Limitations of and advances in small animal positron emission tomography technologies
Positron emission tomography (PET) is perhaps the most important clinical molecular imaging technique because of the unique properties of positron-emitting radionuclides and the high system spatial resolution and sensitivity. Positron-emitting radionuclides, especially carbon 11, nitrogen 13, and oxygen 15, offer unique opportunities for imaging physiologic and biochemical functions of biologic systems that are impossible by other means. The use of fluorine 18-labeled fluorodeoxyglucose in
Limitations of and advances in small animal SPECT technologies
SPECT is widely used in clinical nuclear medicine. The main advantages include its ability to image a wide variety of readily available radiopharmaceuticals labeled with different isotopes that emit photons with a wide range of energies. In addition, its ability to image multiple radiotracers that emit photons with different energies allows multiple physiologic functions to be studied simultaneously. However, conventional SPECT by use of parallel-hole or converging-hole collimators has
Future of high-resolution molecular imaging techniques for cardiovascular research
The development of small animal PET and SPECT imaging techniques is progressing at a fast pace. The performance characteristics of small animal PET and SPECT systems are improving in terms of both spatial resolution and sensitivity. The advances in image reconstruction methods with compensation of image-degrading factors are providing images with much improved quality and quantitative accuracy.
Currently, at a higher system cost, small animal PET systems provide high detection sensitivity. The
Acknowledgment
We thank several collaborators at Johns Hopkins University, including Martin G. Pomper, MD, PhD, for his valuable advice; Catherine Foss, PhD, for radiopharmaceutical preparation; and Jim Fox for animal handling. Benjamin M. W. Tsui is a recipient of a GE research contract and a colicensor of a GE SPECT image reconstruction software package. Benjamin M. W. Tsui and Yuchuan Wang are colicensors of a Gamma Medica pinhole imaging reconstruction software package.
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This work is partially supported by Public Health Service grant CA92871.