Tracking and characterizing the head motion of unanaesthetized rats in positron emission tomography

Andre Kyme, Steven Meikle, Clive Baldock, Roger Fulton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) is an important in vivo molecular imaging technique for translational research. Imaging unanaesthetized rats using motion-compensated PET avoids the confounding impact of anaesthetic drugs and enables animals to be imaged during normal or evoked behaviour. However, there is little published data on the nature of rat head motion to inform the design of suitable marker-based motion-tracking set-ups for brain imaging—specifically, set-ups that afford close to uninterrupted tracking. We performed a systematic study of rat head motion parameters for unanaesthetized tube-bound and freely moving rats with a view to designing suitable motion-tracking set-ups in each case. For tube-bound rats, using a single appropriately placed binocular tracker, uninterrupted tracking was possible greater than 95 per cent of the time. For freely moving rats, simulations and measurements of a live subject indicated that two opposed binocular trackers are sufficient (less than 10% interruption to tracking) for a wide variety of behaviour types. We conclude that reliable tracking of head pose can be achieved with marker-based optical-motion-tracking systems for both tube-bound and freely moving rats undergoing PET studies without sedation.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)3094-3107
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of the Royal Society Interface
Volume9
Issue number76
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • rat head motion
  • motion tracking
  • brain imaging
  • positron emission tomography

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