Thursday 31 March 2016

Approaches in Small Animal Imaging Improves Treatment Accuracy

There has been a rapid growth in small animal imaging (SAI) facilities worldwide. These centers are established to provide non-invasive, high resolution, cost –effective and state –of –the –art both ex –vivo and in –vivo imaging support. SAI is used mainly by the pharma companies and research institutes aiming at studying different disease models. Industry definitely has a promising future, as confirmed by a study conducted by Allied Market Research, which indicates the market is likely to generate $ 2.1 billion during the forecast period 2013 to 2020. The most important challenge faced by the SAI equipment makers is to lower the cost to encourage broader adoption rate.

Perspective & Current Technologies
Developments in biomedical sciences have improved owing to the introduction of several innovative imaging technologies over the past 5 to 6 years. In addition, animal models that are being widely used coupled with pre-clinical sciences; searching ways to carry out animal experiments efficiently is a major factor ensuring both success as well as timeliness of a research. On the other hand non-invasive technologies has proved to be a highly valuable way for conducting such experiments and have increased the recent demand in small animal imaging. This review is narrowed down up on 3 modalities. These include optical imaging, PET and PET and they are made available for scientists who intend to carry out oncological investigations.




Popular Applications of In Vivo Imaging
In vivo or non-invasive optical imaging is particularly beneficial for the research of neurodegenerative diseases. Conventional methods have been long used to get a complete reliance when it comes to accessing brain tissue. This for the major part is the only post-mortem. However, in vivo optical imaging allows the extensive study of tissues that are within contextual influences of the animal. Apart from this the technique contributes generously in lowering the number of animal used in experiments and developments of drug. A recent study shows that owing to its veracity as well as sensitivity, in vivo can now be used effectively for inspecting tumour dynamic morphology. Besides this, non –invasive imaging now uses bioluminescence as an effective tool to probe into graft Vs host disease.

 Competitive Landscape

PerkinElmer Inc. (PKI) is a well know company in the sector. News published in the Cwruobserver the company whose research portfolio consists of instrumentation for in vivo imaging among other is expected to generate about $532.10M by end of 2016. Researchers at the famous Duke University have created genetically modified zebrafish.  Research analysts at Allied Market Research are confident that this would definitely hold answers for questions on tissues regeneration. Researchers at the university say that their findings would provide a platform for both quantitative and large –scale small animal imaging of regenerating skin. Commenting on their discovery James B. Duke and Kenneth D. Poss said  "Before we can fully understand tissue regeneration, we need to be able to monitor what individual cells are doing,". They further added "This is a cutting-edge way to visualize hundreds or thousands of cells at once in a regenerating tissue.
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In another development, one of its kind transformable PET systems was considered feasible. The system is capable of imaging during as well as after the irradiation. What is most commendable is that this miniature OpenPET system is build by a team of disctinguished researchers from the reputed National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) located in Chiba, Japan. The team is led by Taiga Yamaya. Hideaki Tashima the first author said "It is hard to satisfy all imaging requirements at the same time with one mode," said first author Hideaki Tashima. He explained "Therefore the transform system works well – we can minimize the sensitivity loss in practical use by switching between the two modes." The dual-mode scanner also saves space and is more economical than two separate PET systems. These two modes are the open mode and closed mode.


AMR’s market research report titled “World SmallAnimal Imaging (In-Vivo) Market - Opportunities and Forecasts, 2013 – 2020” takes a closer look at the key drivers, restraints and opportunities that are influencing market growth. Research analysts conducting the study see greater opportunities in the Asia –Pacific region. As per the report this region is expected to register a CAGR of about 11.5 percent by 2020.