Trimodal PET/SPECT/CT Preclinical Scanner for Biomedical Research

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overarching objective of this NIH High-End Instrumentation Award application is to acquire a state- of-the-art, high-performance, integrated small-animal PET/SPECT/CT imaging system for multi-modality imaging of rodents to allow biomedical researcher at the University of Virginia (UVa) to obtain noninvasively information that without such a scanner would be impossible. This will provide investigators at UVa heretofore unachievable real-time, in vivo information on anatomical, physiological, and biochemical processes in normal and diseased animals. The specific aims of the proposed instrumentation are to: (1) Replace a 10-year old Siemens Focus 120 PET scanner with an integrated Bruker Albira PET/SPECT/CT scanner. The CT scanner will provide anatomical images and will permit attenuation corrections to be applied to the nuclear (PET and SPECT) imaging data. This scanner uses coincidence PET and collimated. There are other scanners that are available but the Albira provides the best specifications and features for the projects that are of interest to te users. The scanner has excellent sensitivity, spatial coverage and resolution, speed of acquisition, integration and registration of images between modalities, and data analysis software. We also include physiological monitoring hardware to permit the acquisition of cardiac and/or respiratory gated images. The proposed PET/SPECT/CT scanner will be housed in the existing UVa Molecular Imaging Core (UVaMIC) Laboratory. Together with a Bruker ClinScan 7T MRI, a PerkinElmer IVIS Spectrum optical imaging system, a cyclotron and radiochemistry lab, the proposed scanner will bring the multimodal imaging capabilities of the UVaMIC up to current cutting edge. The operation of the proposed equipment will be overseen by the existing UVaMIC Advisory Committee comprised of the PI, the Associate Dean for Research Infrastructure and major users across UVa. The Advisory Committee meets twice a year to review the UVaMIC and to set policies and procedures to assure equitable and maximal use of the core lab equipment.