In-vivo micro-CT for small animals imaging

Recent developments in in-vivo small animal imaging are based on the demand from the biological and pharmaceutical researchers for the high-resolution and high throughput micro-CT instruments. Two in-vivo micro-CT scanners has been developed: a research grade high-resolution scanner with isotropic 8 /spl mu/m voxel size in any location of 80 mm /spl times/ 200 mm animal's body and an ultra-fast full-body scanner with acquisition + reconstruction cycle for 512/sup 3/ pixels of 100-180 seconds. The research grade system uses small-angle scattering for resolution improvement without extra dose and incorporates unique reconstruction software for cross-section size up to 8K/spl times/8K pixels. The fast micro-CT scanner is designed on the basis of dual-beam X-ray geometry and multicomputer reconstruction through local network. Both systems include animal's physiological monitoring and possibility for scanning synchronization with breathing rate. Software provides analysis from the reconstructed dataset and shows results as a realistic 3D-image with possibilities of virtual manipulations.