Nuclear Medicine Department, François Baclesse Cancer Centre, Avenue Général Harris, 14076 Caen Cedex, France.
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2012 Sep;39(9):1497-509. doi: 10.1007/s00259-012-2177-x. Epub 2012 Jul 13.
Over the last decade, small-animal PET imaging has become a vital platform technology in cancer research. With the development of molecularly targeted therapies and drug combinations requiring evaluation of different schedules, the number of animals to be imaged within a PET experiment has increased. This paper describes experimental design requirements to reach statistical significance, based on the expected change in tracer uptake in treated animals as compared to the control group, the number of groups that will be imaged, and the expected intra-animal variability for a given tracer. We also review how high-throughput studies can be performed in dedicated small-animal PET, high-resolution clinical PET systems and planar positron imaging systems by imaging more than one animal simultaneously. Customized beds designed to image more than one animal in large-bore small-animal PET scanners are described. Physics issues related to the presence of several rodents within the field of view (i.e. deterioration of spatial resolution and sensitivity as the radial and the axial offsets increase, respectively, as well as a larger effect of attenuation and the number of scatter events), which can be assessed by using the NEMA NU 4 image quality phantom, are detailed.
在过去的十年中，小动物 PET 成像已成为癌症研究中至关重要的平台技术。随着需要评估不同方案的分子靶向治疗和药物组合的发展，在 PET 实验中需要成像的动物数量增加了。本文基于处理组动物与对照组相比示踪剂摄取的预期变化、要成像的组数量以及给定示踪剂的个体内可变性，描述了达到统计学意义的实验设计要求。我们还回顾了如何通过同时对多个动物进行成像，在专用小动物 PET、高分辨率临床 PET 系统和平面正电子成像系统中进行高通量研究。描述了为在大孔径小动物 PET 扫描仪中对多个动物进行成像而设计的定制床。详细介绍了与视野内存在多个啮齿动物相关的物理问题（即随着径向和轴向偏移量的增加，空间分辨率和灵敏度分别恶化，以及衰减和散射事件数量的影响更大），这些问题可以使用 NEMA NU 4 图像质量体模进行评估。
