SPECT and PET Imaging of Small Animals Volume 2nd Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past two decades, there has been a great demand for dedicated small-animal imaging systems for biomedical research applications. Several commercial and research small-animal imaging systems have recently emerged, including PET, PET/CT, and PET/MR, as well as SPECT and SPECT/CT scanners. These small-animal imaging modalities are powerful tools providing crucial biological and physiological information to researchers. Non-invasive in vivo imaging of small animals has become an important tool in biomedical research.

There are many preclinical applications of small-animal PET and SPECT systems, for example, in the areas of cardiology, neurology, and oncology. Small-animal imaging focuses on the study of various diseases like cancer, with a tremendous impact on applications such as drug development. Furthermore, small-animal imaging systems facilitate the monitoring of pharmacological and therapeutic intervention for these diseases. In recent years, there has been an increased demand for improved drug development and for in vivo monitoring of internal organs’ morphological and functional characteristics. In this direction, there are several aspects of medicine that can be thoroughly explored by microPET and microSPECT systems, including diagnosis and novel therapeutic interventions. Therefore, therapeutics, clinical trials, and translational research can greatly benefit from small-animal imaging. The future of small-animal imaging lies in the upgrade of relevant hardware and software, in the development of novel applications, and in the improvement of camera sensitivity, spatial resolution, and sophisticated image reconstruction.

The aim of this Special Issue is to present novel and diverse research articles that demonstrate new instrumentation developments, imaging protocols, reconstruction algorithms, and imaging applications in small-animal PET and SPECT imaging. This is not limited to special application areas.

Dr. Anastasios Gaitanis
Dr. Nicholas E. Protonotarios
Dr. George Kastis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Imaging is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• small-animal imaging (i.e., PET- and SPECT-based scanners, instrumentation)
• small-animal imaging applications (i.e., drug discovery, quantification)
• radionuclide imaging
• imaging protocols
• image reconstruction
• image processing
• radiomics