RADIONUCLIDE TOMOGRAPHIC CAMERA AND DEDICATED COMPUTER

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This grant requests a Radionuclide Tomographic Camera and Dedicated Computer for data storage and quantitation. This equipment will take the place of a 12 year old computer and a 10 year old non-tomographic radionuclide camers located in the radionuclide biodistribution laboratory of the University of Michigan Medical Center. The animal biodistribution laboratory is under the direction of the Division of Nuclear Medicine of the Department of Internal Medicine. Every radionuclide or radionuclide labeled compound synthesized at the University of Michigan must be evaluated in two types of animals for the preparation of an Investigational New Drug (I.N.D.) permit by the F.D.A. and Institutional Permission for Use in Humans. Although autogamma counters and liquid scientillation counters are used for bioassay of excised tissue specimens, the camera allows in vivo imaging and serial quantitation of function in the living animal. The experiments in animals are supervised by the Nuclear Pharmacy of the Nuclear Medicine Division to ensure that the experiments will be most efficiently planned to meet the requirements of an I.N.D. The high resolution camera and dedicated computer will allow the investigator to decide from whole body animal images whether diagnostic images might be feasible in human beings. They will also allow acquisition of sequential quantitative information in the same animal (without sacrifice of the animals) to give time-activity curves that reflect the animal's physiology or pathology in handling the radiopharmaceutical. This quantitative imaging reduces the number of animals required to evaluate the potential diagnostic efficacy of a variety of radiopharmaceuticals and the avoidance of unnecessary I.N.D. preparations and submissions for evaluation of radiopharmaceuticals with little promise in humans. The tomographic camera and computer will also allow the quantitation of accumulation of a radiopharmaceutical within a tumor mass whose volume is composed of both metabolically active as well as non-metabolically active tissue and thus enable a more accurate quantitation of radiation dose to a tumor (or organ) for both diagnostic and therapeutic doses. This new equipment would not only facilitate collaborative research projects between the four N.I.H. funded Investigator in Nuclear Medicine but also with investigators in Surgery, Obstetrics/Gynecology, Otorhinolaryngology, and Internal Medicine.