Abstract
Standardisation of animal handling procedures for a wide range of preclinical imaging scanners will improve imaging performance and reproducibility of scientific data. Whilst there has been significant effort in defining how well scanners should operate and how in vivo experimentation should be practised, there is little detail on how to achieve optimal scanner performance with best practices in animal welfare. Here, we describe a system-agnostic, adaptable and extensible animal support cradle system for cardio-respiratory-synchronised, and other, multi-modal imaging of small animals. The animal support cradle can be adapted on a per application basis and features integrated tubing for anaesthetic and tracer delivery, an electrically driven rectal temperature maintenance system and respiratory and cardiac monitoring. Through a combination of careful material and device selection, we have described an approach that allows animals to be transferred whilst under general anaesthesia between any of the tomographic scanners we currently or have previously operated. The set-up is minimally invasive, cheap and easy to implement and for multi-modal, multi-vendor imaging of small animals.
Highlights
Preclinical imaging is established as an integral part of biomedical research and the associated development pipeline for new biomarkers, drugs and therapies [1,2,3]
Whilst much effort has been focussed on optimisation of contrast agents, hardware design and image reconstruction, much less attention has been paid to the animal handling and physiological monitoring apparatus
At our institute, on three magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners (Bruker and Varian), positron emission tomography (PET)/single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/computed tomography (CT) (MILabs) and an image-guided radiotherapy system (SARRP) upon which MR image-guided radiotherapy is performed in abdominal tumours as a matter of routine [12]
Summary
Preclinical imaging is established as an integral part of biomedical research and the associated development pipeline for new biomarkers, drugs and therapies [1,2,3]. Many preclinical imaging systems are supplied with the basic apparatus for animal restraint, physiological monitoring and generation of cardiorespiratory gating/triggering signals, most of these apparatuses are not comprehensive and are incompatible across vendors where multi-modal imaging is required [4,5]. Many small-animal imaging and image-guided radiotherapy procedures require the use of general anaesthesia primarily for immobilisation and for minimising stress related to the insertion of invasive devices. Whatever the reason, they all necessitate reliable means to position the animal within the scanner or radiotherapy device, monitor the animal’s vital signs, assess anaesthetic depth and provide thermoregulation in a manner that is compatible with the imaging and/or radiotherapy systems being used. In addition to the animal welfare considerations, cardio-respiratory monitoring allows for cardio-respiratory gating/triggering to synchronise the imaging to their respective cycles and avoid motionrelated image degradation [6,7,8]
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