High-resolution dynamic imaging and quantitative analysis of lung cancer xenografts in nude mice using clinical PET/CT

Considering the general application of dedicated small-animal positron emission tomography/computed tomography is limited, an acceptable alternative in many situations might be clinical PET/CT. To estimate the feasibility of using clinical PET/CT with [F-18]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose for high-resolution dynamic imaging and quantitative analysis of cancer xenografts in nude mice. Dynamic clinical PET/CT scans were performed on xenografts for 60 min after injection with [F-18]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose. Scans were reconstructed with or without SharpIR method in two phases. And mice were sacrificed to extracting major organs and tumors, using ex vivo γ-counting as a reference. Strikingly, we observed that the image quality and the correlation between the all quantitive data from clinical PET/CT and the ex vivo counting was better with the SharpIR reconstructions than without. Our data demonstrate that clinical PET/CT scanner with SharpIR reconstruction is a valuable tool for imaging small animals in preclinical cancer research, offering dynamic imaging parameters, good image quality and accurate data quatification.