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Hello. My name is David Stout.
I'm the Director of the Preclinical Imaging Technology Center here at the UCLA Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging.
Today I'm going to go over some preclinical imaging design center ideas about designing center's, animal handling,
and examples of different types of molecular imaging modalities.
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A wide range of imaging technologies have been developed within the past few years that are now capable of imaging small animals such as mice and rats.
The ability to image these smaller species has led to a rapid shift from using pigs, dogs or primates or any of the larger species.
It's advantageous to use these smaller animals because they're more cost effective and they're not endangered.
The sensitivity and the capabilities of these systems have greatly improved since earlier versions,
and now we're seeing a move towards multimodality imaging systems such as the PET-CT combination or perhaps an PET-MR,
or coupling of optical imaging systems with X-ray technology.
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When designing an imaging center, the first place to start is to think about what is it that you plan to image.
Are you interested in simply doing cells or in vitro samples?
Would you like to be imaging in mice or perhaps rats?
Or is there a good scientific reason why you need to be in a larger species such as canines or primates?
Will you be working with biohazardous materials or infectious agents,
or as common in many places now doing oncology research,
will you be using immune compromised animals such as scid and nude mice?
Will there be a need for a mixture of species or a mixture of different types of bio hazards?
Once you have an idea about the types of things that you want to support in your imaging center,
then you can think about what are the best technologies that you would want to use to image the information that you're trying to obtain.
Is this going to be a PET scan facility?
Are you interested in using SPECT or bioluminescence or ultrasound or MR?
Each of these systems have unique different requirements,
both for housing the systems and how the systems are used.
For example, in MR, you need to be concerned about electromagnetic shielding.
Whereas, in PET and SPECT, you're using radioactivity in an open area.
CT will generate radioactivity, but in general CT systems are self-shielded.
Each of the imaging modalities have their own pros and cons as to where their strengths and where their weaknesses lie.
