Core--Small Animal Cancer Imaging Facility

小动物癌症Imaqina核心 华盛顿大学癌症研究界广泛使用小鼠、大鼠和仓鼠等小型实验动物模型。的确，随着最近分子生物学的革命，转基因实验动物模型，特别是小鼠，已经成为癌症研究中不可或缺的一部分。然而，癌症的动物模型在决定如何最好地评估或分析感兴趣的特征或影响时，可能会给研究人员带来重大挑战。例如，最常见的情况是，人们希望在执行各种程序的延长时间段内跟踪组成样本总体的每个个体受试者。因此，侵入性和/或破坏性程序，特别是那些需要牺牲受试者的程序，是令人望而却步的。在这些下面 在这种情况下，非破坏性成像方式，如磁共振成像、正电子发射断层扫描和光学成像尤其有价值。小动物癌症成像核心的目标和具体目标基本上与最初描述的一样，即为华盛顿大学和圣路易斯地区的癌症研究社区带来资源，提供最先进的小动物磁共振成像、正电子发射断层扫描和光学成像。如本文件所述，光学成像正在作为一种新的方式添加到核心中。光学成像的属性补充了正电子发射断层成像和磁共振成像的属性。尤其是，光学 成像通过靶标(分子)标记提供了极高的信号检测灵敏度，同时避免了放射性核素固有的困难。光学成像在探测深层结构方面面临挑战，这是PET的长处，也是实现高空间分辨率的挑战，高空间分辨率是MRI的长处。因此，这三种模式是互补的，而不是多余的，并为小动物癌症模型的多模式评估提供了巨大的机会。

Small Animal Cancer Imaqina Core Small laboratory animal models such as mice, rats and hamsters are widely used throughout the cancer research community at Washington University. Indeed, with the recent revolution in molecular biology, transgenic laboratory animal models, in particular, mice have become an indispensable part of the cancer research armamentarium. Animal models of cancer, however, can present the researcher with significant challenges in deciding how best to evaluate or analyze for the characteristics or effects of interest. Most often, for example, one wishes to follow each of the individual subjects that make up a sample population over an extended time period during which various procedures are carried out. Thus, invasive and/or destructive procedures, especially those that require sacrifice of the subject, are prohibitive. Under these circumstances, nondestructive imaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and optical imaging are especially valuable. The goals and specific aims of the Small Animal Cancer Imaging Core remain essentially as initially described, namely to bring to the Washington University and St. Louis region cancer research communities a resource that offers state-of-the-art small animal magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and optical imaging. As described in this document, optical imaging is being added as a new modality to the Core. The attributes of optical imaging complement those of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. In particular, optical imaging offers extremely high signal detection sensitivity with target-specific (molecular) labeling while avoiding the difficulties inherent with radionuciides. Optical Imaging faces challenges in probing deep lying structures, a strength of PET, and in achieving high spatial resolution, a strength of MRI. Thus, the three modalities are complementary, rather than redundant, and offer great opportunities for multi-modal assessment of small animal cancer models.