Development of a Low Cost High Performance Animal PET

项目描述（由申请人提供）：该项目的长期目标是通过(a)提高成像分辨率、图像质量、灵敏度和功能，以及(b)大幅降低动物PET的成本，加速癌症、药物开发、基因表达和治疗领域的研究和发现，从而使更多的生物实验室能够负担得起这种有用的分子成像技术。动物模型，如基因工程小鼠，已被证明是这些领域的首选工具。这些工具有更大的价值，当生化和制药过程成像和研究与PET在体内。然而，高分辨率的啮齿动物pet太贵了，大多数生物学家都负担不起（55万至75万美元）。其次，进一步提高成像分辨率，探测小鼠体内更小的结构，检测更小的病变，监测更小的肿瘤。第三，动物PET的发展从一开始就只注重分辨率，而牺牲了检测灵敏度和成本。灵敏度上的妥协主要是由于其技术成本高，通过减少轴向视场（AFOV）来使用更少的探测器。然而，随着分辨率的提高（检测器像素更小，但像素更多），对更多计数（灵敏度）的需求变得更加迫切，以便保持每个检测器像素相同的统计质量。因此，除非同时提高检测灵敏度，否则无法充分实现高分辨率带来的好处。此外，灵敏度对于探测较低水平的生化活动和提高通量是有用的。我们建议以一半的成本开发一种动物PET，同时提供比目前商用系统更高的分辨率，以及2.6-7倍的灵敏度。AFOV增大55%，提高了吞吐量，使整只转基因小鼠在一个床位成像，成像质量更均匀，便于对全身动态变化进行成像。大AFOV和超高分辨率允许动脉输入功能成像量化示踪剂动力学。这款高性能低成本的系统是基于我们低成本的PET探测器设计，新型高效的探测器生产工程技术和电子技术。该系统还使我们能够研究一种新的三维数据采集和重建方法，可以获得所有4-pi立体角的发射线（“完整的三维数据”）。该方法可以进一步改善图像质量和三维图像重建过程。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The long-term objective of the project is to accelerate research and discoveries in the areas of cancer, drug development, gene expression and therapy by (a) improving the imaging resolution, image quality, sensitivity and functionality, and (b) substantially lowering the cost of animal PET so more biology laboratories can afford this useful molecular imaging technology. Animal models, such as genetically engineered mice, have proven to be the tools of choice in these areas. These tools have even greater value when the biochemical and pharmaceutical processes are imaged and studied in vivo with PET. However, a rodent-PET with high resolution is too expensive to be within the reach of most biologists ($550,000-$750,000). Secondly, the imaging resolution should be improved further to probe smaller structures in mice, to detect smaller lesions and monitor smaller tumors. Thirdly, since inception, animal PET development has always been focusing solely on resolution at the expenses of detection sensitivity and cost. The compromise in sensitivity is mainly due to the high cost of its technology by resorting to decreasing the axial field of view (AFOV) to use fewer detectors. However, as resolution improves (smaller detector pixels but more pixels), the need for more counts (sensitivity) becomes more acute so as to maintain the same statistical quality per detector pixel. Hence, unless detection sensitivity is also improved, the full benefit of higher resolution cannot be realized. Furthermore, sensitivity is useful for probing lower levels of biochemical activities and to improve throughput. We propose to develop an animal PET at half the cost, while providing higher resolution than current commercial system, plus a 2.6-7 times higher sensitivity. It also has a 55% larger AFOV to increase throughput and to image the whole transgenic mouse in one bed position with more uniform image quality and to facilitate imaging wholebody dynamic changes in time. The large AFOV and ultrahigh resolution allow arterial input function to be imaged for quantifying tracer dynamics. This high performance low cost system is based on our low-cost PET detector design, novel efficient detector-production engineering technology, and electronic technology. The system also enable us to the study of a new 3-D data-acquisition and reconstruction method, whereby emission lines from all 4-pi-solid-angles can be acquired ("complete 3-D data"). This method may further improve image quality and the 3-D image reconstruction process.