Preclinical Opti-SPECT/PET/CT system preps intraoperative drug discovery

Jigsaw preclinical imaging is not a new concept. However novel instrumentation called Opti-SPECT/PET/CT presented during the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) held June 7-11 in St. Louis brings together a full spectrum of molecular imaging technology into one system—and one scan. Bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging agents developed with the platform could one day be implemented as intraoperative tracers during surgery, most notably for oncologic procedures.

Frederik Beekman, PhD, head of radiation technology and medical imaging and professor at Delft University of Technology in Delft, The Netherlands, and colleagues evaluated the preclinical imaging capability of the hybrid for anti-angiogenesis drugs and compared results with another add-on preclinical imaging system.

“We developed a new tool that allows, for the first time, performance of optical (fluorescence and bioluminescence), SPECT, PET and CT in a single scan with a single dose of anesthesia,” said Beekman. “This device 'squeezes’ the maximum information out of one single scan.”

The Opti-SPECT/PET/CT system is housed with a low-noise CCD camera, a powerful white light source with respective wavelength filters and a dark room—a box slides over the U-SPECT-II robot table to create the effect. For this study, researchers tested a tumor tissue phantom with technetium-99m and fluorescent dye and in a separate experiment they tested bioluminescence-implanted mice with the radionuclide and fluorescent angiogenesis agent In-111 MSAP-RGD.

Results of the study showed that the Opti-SPECT/PET/CT system provided high quality imaging that was comparable to dedicated optical devices. The addition of SPECT and PET improved drug distribution data and the interpretation of optical data. Bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging maps out more properties of experimental tumor models.