Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Part I Types of Imaging Reporter Genes
- Part II Enhancing Reporter Gene Imaging Techniques
- Part III Imaging Instrumentations
- 7 Physics, Instrumentation, and Methods for Imaging Reporter Gene Expression in Living Subjects
- Part IV Current Applications of Imaging Reporter Genes
- Index
- References
7 - Physics, Instrumentation, and Methods for Imaging Reporter Gene Expression in Living Subjects
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Part I Types of Imaging Reporter Genes
- Part II Enhancing Reporter Gene Imaging Techniques
- Part III Imaging Instrumentations
- 7 Physics, Instrumentation, and Methods for Imaging Reporter Gene Expression in Living Subjects
- Part IV Current Applications of Imaging Reporter Genes
- Index
- References
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Achieving in vivo imaging of gene transfer provides molecular imaging with exciting opportunities in applications such as tracking stem or progenitor cells after transplantation or guiding efficacy studies of gene therapy. Monitoring of transgene expression is routinely accomplished by coexpressing marker genes with potential therapeutic transgenes in small laboratory animals. In this standard approach, the animals are sacrificed and methods such as histology or fluorescence microscopy (e.g., see) are performed on appropriate tissue samples to analyze the presence of marker gene expression. As with other biological studies, it is desirable to perform these studies routinely using noninvasive imaging to increase efficiency and information content associated with monitoring transgene expression over time in the same research subject.
In this chapter we describe currently available imaging technologies utilized in the reporter gene imaging research described in this book. These technologies exploit energy emissions that span nearly the entire range of the electromagnetic spectrum. The imaging system's function is to collect these signals and form images that can be analyzed to monitor the spatiotemporal characteristics of certain cellular and molecular processes occurring in cells located within tissues of living subjects. Certain imaging systems actually excite the processes that produce the detected signal, as in the case of optical fluorescence or magnetic resonance imaging. The molecular imaging technologies described in this book for noninvasive reporter gene imaging include optical techniques that utilize fluorescence or bioluminescence light photon emissions, the radionuclide methods of positron emission tomography and single photon emission tomography that collect positron annihilation or gamma ray photons, respectively, and magnetic resonance methods that rely on emissions from the radiofrequency portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Molecular Imaging with Reporter Genes , pp. 151 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010