In Vivo Radio-Tracer Quantification with Small Animal Imaging

72425-Pre-clinical in vivo studies for pharmaceutical development utilizing new molecular imaging tools have limited accuracy due to quantification errors that arise from the physics in the image acquisition process. Techniques for correcting attenuation errors and improved quantification assessment not only can lead to improved accuracy in drug development and disease studies but also can speed up the development cycle and reduce the number of sacrificed animals. In this project, pharmacological functions will be assessed using radio-tracers in combination with imaging. The amount of tracers will be quantified, with radionuclide imaging corrected for physical errors, using a priori information from co-registered anatomical images. In Phase I, specific image correction algorithms were implemented and tested. The practicality of performing accurate quantification of activity contained within lesions of various sizes, pursuant to small animal studies, was demonstrated. Phase II will develop a prototype pre-commercial package of integrated hardware and software tools (including attenuation correction, collimator response correction, and system response matrix correction) that will enable researchers in pre-clinical studies to accurately and quantitatively assess and report the biodistribution of radio-tracer-labeled agents, both physiologically and/or pathologically. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by awardee: The imaging technique should provide the biological and pharmacological communities with a powerful in vivo assessment tool for pre-clinical studies. The immediate market should include University and Federal research laboratories, as well as the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries.