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 μm voxel size in any location of 80 mm × 200 mm animal´s body and an ultra-fast full-body scanner with acquisition + reconstruction cycle for 512³ 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×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.