The H2RS-PET team is a multi-institutional group established to push the spatial resolution and sensitivity of positron emission tomography (PET) scanners to the highest level.
PET is an medical imaging technique that can map out the location or track the movement of tiny amounts of radioactively-tagged compounds (radiotracers) after they are introduced into the body. PET is widely used in clinical studies and preclinical studies. There are over thousands of clinical PET scanners and hundreds of small-animal scanners across the world performing millions of PET scans each year.
Key characteristics of PET are spatial resolution and sensitivity, which strongly affect the quantitative accuracy and precision of PET imaging.
We are developing two total-body small animal PET scanners with much higher spatial resolution and sensitivity, which are funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) .
The first scanner (H2RS-PET), with an ~12 cm diameter and ~17 cm axial length, has a ~0.5 mm spatial resolution and over 20% sensitivity. It is aimed for total-body mouse studies and rat brain studies.
The second scanner (HS-BGO PET), with an 18 cm diameter and 33 cm axial length and based on BGO crystal, has a ~1.0 mm spatial resolution and over 40% sensitivity. It can be used for both total-body mouse and rat studies using ultra-low radiation dose.
We expect that these two PET scanners would set the stage for using PET for applications such as high-resolution brain studies and fast total-body dynamic studies, and kinetic modeling studies using mouse/rat models. They can also provide a useful preclinical tool using mouse/rat models to develop, validate, characterize the paradigms and protocols that will feed into human total-body PET studies and brain studies.
