This textbook is a practical guide to the use of small animal imaging in preclinical research that will assist in the choice of imaging modality and contrast agent and in study design, experimental setup, and data evaluation. All established imaging modalities are discussed in detail, with the assistance of numerous informative illustrations. While the focus of the new edition remains on practical basics, it has been updated to encompass a variety of emerging imaging modalities, methods, and applications. Additional useful hints are also supplied on the installation of a small animal unit, study planning, animal handling, and cost-effective performance of small animal imaging. Cross-calibration methods and data postprocessing are considered in depth. This new edition of Small Animal Imaging will be an invaluable aid for researchers, students, and technicians involved in research into and applications of small animal imaging.

This book examines the fundamental concepts of multimodality small-animal molecular imaging technologies and their numerous applications in biomedical research. Driven primarily by the widespread availability of various small-animal models of human diseases replicating accurately biological and biochemical processes in vivo, this is a relatively new yet rapidly expanding field that has excellent potential to become a powerful tool in biomedical research and drug development. In addition to being a powerful clinical tool, a number of imaging modalities including but not limited to CT, MRI, SPECT and PET are also used in small laboratory animal research to visualize and track certain molecular processes associated with diseases such as cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders in living small animal models of disease. In vivo small-animal imaging is playing a pivotal role in the scientific research paradigm enabling to understand human molecular biology and pathophysiology using, for instance, genetically engineered mice with spontaneous diseases that closely mimic human diseases.

Radioisotope-based molecular imaging probes provide unprecedented insight into biochemistry and function involved in both normal and disease states of living systems, with unbiased in vivo measurement of regional radiotracer activities offering very high specificity and sensitivity. No other molecular imaging technology including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can provide such high sensitivity and specificity at a tracer level. The applications of this technology can be very broad ranging from drug development, pharmacokinetics, clinical investigations, and finally to routine diagnostics in radiology. The design and the development of radiopharmaceuticals for molecular imaging studies using PET/MicroPET or SPECT/MicroSPECT are a unique challenge. This book is intended for a broad audience and written with the main purpose of educating the reader on various aspects including potential clinical utility, limitations of drug development, and regulatory compliance and approvals.

The field of molecular imaging of living subjects have evolved considerably and have seen spectacular advances in chemistry, engineering and biomedical applications. This textbook was designed to fill the need for an authoritative source for this multi-disciplinary field. We have been fortunate to recruit over 80 leading authors contributing 75 individual chapters. Given the multidisciplinary nature of the field, the book is broken into six different sections: "Molecular Imaging technologies", "Chemistry", "Molecular Imaging in Cell and Molecular Biology", "Applications of Molecular Imaging", "Molecular Imaging in Drug Evaluation" with the final section comprised of chapters on computation, bioinformatics and modeling. The organization of this large amount of information is logical and strives to avoid redundancies among chapters. It encourages the use of figures to illustrate concepts and to provide numerous molecular imaging examples.

Small-Animal SPECT Imaging is an edited work derived from the first workshop on Small-Animal SPECT Imaging held January 14-16, 2004 at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA. The overall goal of the meeting and therefore this volume is to promote information exchange and collaboration between the research groups developing systems for small-animal applications. Topics include the biomedical significance of small-animal imaging, an overview of detector technologies including scintillation cameras and semi-conductor arrays, imager design and data acquisition systems, animal handling and anesthesia issues, objective assessment of image quality, and system modeling and reconstruction algorithms.

Targeted Molecular Imaging covers the development of novel diagnostic approaches that use an imaging probe and agent to noninvasively visualize cellular processes in normal and disease states. It discusses the concept, development, preclinical studies, and, in many cases, translation to the clinic of targeted imaging agents. The many case studies t

The aim of this textbook of molecular imaging is to provide an up to date review of this rapidly growing field and to discuss basic methodological aspects necessary for the interpretation of experimental and clinical results. Emphasis is placed on the interplay of imaging technology and probe development, since the physical properties of the imaging approach need to be closely linked with the biologic application of the probe (i.e. nanoparticles and microbubbles). Various chemical strategies are discussed and related to the biologic applications. Reporter-gene imaging is being addressed not only in experimental protocols, but also first clinical applications are discussed. Finally, strategies of imaging to characterize apoptosis and angiogenesis are described and discussed in the context of possible clinical translation.