| First Author | Frost GR | Year | 2020 |
| Journal | Sci Rep | Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 | Pages | 10379 |
| PubMed ID | 32587315 | Mgi Jnum | J:293764 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6451838 | Doi | 10.1038/s41598-020-67284-z |
| Citation | Frost GR, et al. (2020) Hybrid PET/MRI enables high-spatial resolution, quantitative imaging of amyloid plaques in an Alzheimer's disease mouse model. Sci Rep 10(1):10379 |
| abstractText | The emergence of PET probes for amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, hallmarks of Alzheimer disease (AD), enables monitoring of pathology in AD mouse models. However, small-animal PET imaging is limited by coarse spatial resolution. We have installed a custom-fabricated PET insert into our small-animal MRI instrument and used PET/MRI hybrid imaging to define regions of amyloid vulnerability in 5xFAD mice. We compared fluorine-18 [(18)F]-Florbetapir uptake in the 5xFAD brain by dedicated small-animal PET/MRI and PET/CT to validate the quantitative measurement of PET/MRI. Next, we used PET/MRI to define uptake in six brain regions. As expected, uptake was comparable to wild-type in the cerebellum and elevated in the cortex and hippocampus, regions implicated in AD. Interestingly, uptake was highest in the thalamus, a region often overlooked in AD studies. Development of small-animal PET/MRI enables tracking of brain region-specific pathology in mouse models, which may prove invaluable to understanding AD progression and therapeutic development. |
