Small animal models are employed to simulate disease in humans and to study its progression, what factors are important to the disease process, and to study the disease treatment. Biomedical imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and Optical Tomography make it possible to non-invasively monitor the progression of diseases in living small animals and study the efficacy of drugs and treatment protocols. MRI is an established imaging modality capable of obtaining high resolution anatomical images and along with contrast agents allow the studying of blood volume. Optical tomography, on the other hand, is an emerging imaging modality, which, while much lower in spatial resolution, can separate the effects of oxyhemoglobin, deoxyhemoglobin, and blood volume with high temporal resolution. In this study we apply these modalities to imaging the growth of kidney tumors and then there treatment by an anti-VEGF agent. We illustrate how these imaging modalities have their individual uses, but can still supplement each other and cross validation can be performed.

Date Published: 15 February 2006
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 6081, Multimodal Biomedical Imaging, 608105 (15 February 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.647138

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6081:
Multimodal Biomedical Imaging
Fred S. Azar; Dimitris N. Metaxas, Editor(s)