Research Article
A Comparison of Imaging Techniques to Monitor Tumor Growth and Cancer Progression in Living Animals
Table 1
The process of analyzing tumor burden in whole mice.
| | FDG-PET | T2W-MRI | BLI | FLI |
| Operating costs | Around five US dollars per time point per animal for all techniques | Equipment costs | ~600,000 US dollars | 1 to 2 million US dollars | <500,000 US dollars | <500,000 US dollars | Mouse preparation | Anesthesia, tracer injection, incubation time and positioning | Anesthesia, set up of monitoring, prescan for positioning | Anesthesia, substrate injection, incubation time, shaving (optional), and positioning | Anesthesia, shaving and positioning | Mouse preparation time | 1 h 30 min | 30 min | 20 min | 5 min | Scanning time | 15 min/3D scan | 30 min/2D multislice scan/area (2 areas scanned per mouse) | 1 s–2 min/picture 1 to 10 pictures/scan | 1 s–30 s/picture 1 to 10 pictures/scan | Data analysis | Requires expertise | Requires expertise | Straightforward | Straightforward | Data analysis time | 1 h | 1 h 30 min | 20 min | 20 min | Total time 1 animal | 3 h | 3 h | 1 h | 30 min | Total time 10 animals | 13 h | 30 h | 2 h | 1 h |
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