ABSTRACT
PET and SPECT imaging are methodologies used in a variety of preclinical research applications. Both imaging modalities have shown to be important in the development of new radiopharmaceuticals for clinical and research applications. In biological research preclinical PET and SPECT imaging can provide a better understanding of molecular pathways of disease and therapy. Using human disease models in mice and rodents, preclinical imaging can be used to facilitate the discovery and design of new diagnostic and therapeutic agents. Both modalities are well-established imaging technologies and integrated laboratory tools that are used to make important contributions to a wide variety of fields in medical and biological sciences.
The requirements for both high spatial resolution and high sensitivity make instrumentation design for preclinical imaging systems extremely challenging. The performance of preclinical PET and SPECT systems have improved remarkably over the last 25 years. Much of these improvements are the results of improvement in detector technology such as the discovery of new scintillator materials and development of new photodetector technologies. This has allowed preclinical PET systems to reach theoretical resolution limits. Innovative collimator detector design for preclinical SPECT systems has resulted in images with sub-mm resolution.
This chapter will discuss challenges in preclinical PET and SPECT instrumentation design and give examples of system designs that are utilizing state-of-the-art detector technologies. Multi-modality imaging, animal handling, and the importance of system performance and quality control are also discussed.
