Justine Cadet, Editorial Director

Preclinical imaging is presenting new opportunities for potential care of new patient populations that includes spinal imaging for bone marrow cellurarity assessment and a unique brain imaging technique.

Measuring bone marrow cellularity is typically done using a biopsy of the iliac crest, but a recent study published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine indicates that MRI images may also adequately, and noninvasively, measure in vivo bone marrow cellularity.

University of Florida in Gainesville researchers acquired spoiled gradient-echo in vivo images of the femur, humerus, upper spine and lower spine from two dogs using a clinical 3T MRI scanner. “The excellent agreement between the methods indicates that SP-IDEAL can be used to derive the adipocyte volume fraction data necessary for the estimation of patient-specific active bone marrow mass using published predictive equations,” the authors concluded.

Similarly, researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland have developed a cryo-imaging technique to view a mouse model of glioblastoma multiforme, according to a study published in Cancer Research.

The ability to produce such clear and detailed images, the researchers said, will be invaluable when evaluating the potency of drugs and other therapies designed to block dispersal of glioblastoma multiforme cells.

Also, new in this space is a variety of preclinical imaging equipment, including a pair of scanners from Carestream Molecular Imaging, and a preclinical workplace from Siemens Healthcare Molecular Imaging—all of which debuted at the World Molecular Imaging Congress in San Diego.

Please let us know what avenues of research you are pursuing via preclinical imaging at your facility.

Justine Cadet
jcadet@trimedmedia.com