Wearable PET Scanner Maps Rat Brains in Real Time

[TECH NEWS]

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, and collaborators have demonstrated the efficacy of a “wearable,” portable PET scanner they’ve developed for rats. The device will give neuroscientists a new tool for simultaneously studying brain function and behavior in fully awake, moving animals. The researchers describe the tool and validation studies in the April 2011 issue of Nature Methods. “Positron emission tomography (PET) is a powerful tool for studying the molecular processes that occur in the brain,” said Paul Vaska, head of PET physics at Brookhaven with an adjunct appointment at Stony Brook, who led the development of the portable scanner together with Brookhaven colleagues David Schlyer and Craig Woody. But studying animals with PET has required general anesthesia or other methods to immobilize the animals. “Our approach,” Schuyler said, “was to eliminate the need for restraint by developing a PET scanner that would move with the animal, thus opening up the possibility of directly correlating the imaging data with behavioral data acquired at the same time.”

3/13/11, Brookhaven National Laboratory News