Video recordings from some of the presentations held at the Second International Definiens Symposium at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, are now available on YouTube. Click here to see an overview of all currently available recordings.

Automated Feature Extraction from microPET/CT Images of Live Chick Embryos in ovo: Incubating a Versatile Model for Preclinical Imaging

ALEXANDER HEIDRICH

HKI Jena, Germany

The chick embryo in ovo is an excellent in vivo model system that has a long history of application in almost any field of biomedical research.
Consequently the embryonated chicken egg is also a highly interesting subject for preclinical imaging particularly with the emerging availability of high resolution microPET/CT scanners. The research of the microPET/CT imaging group at the HKI Jena is focused on establishing the chick embryo in ovo as model system especially for but not limited to the in vivo stability evaluation of newly synthesized tracers and the imaging of infectious diseases. However, besides technical challenges, such as anesthesia and tracer injection methodology, also in our lab the dominant bottleneck remains the efficient and reproducible analysis of acquired image data.
In this talk we present an approach for the automatic analysis of 3D 18F-fluoride microPET images of live chick embryos in ovo. 18F-fluoride alone is a well known bone tracer but it can be also bound to other biomolecules targeting different processes of interest. The stability of these complexes can be evaluated by quantifying the enrichment of dissociated or separated 18F-fluoride in the bones.
The complete process of image loading, preprocessing as well as segmentation and classification of body structures is realized by employing Definiens Developer XD, CNT and a sophisticated anatomical model.