Micro Imager
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Digital Autoradiography for Nuclear Medicine Research |
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Research in nuclear medicine requires appropriate ways to localize
and quantify precisely molecular interactions with small animal imaging techniques. Even though in vivo optical imaging is gaining more and more acceptance and
constantly overcoming its limitations, nuclear imaging remains the most sensitive technique for a precise detection, localization and quantification of a signal. Biospace Lab, with over 20 years
of experience in the field of digital autoradiography, has developped instruments with unique technology designs to answer the requirements of researchers in a fast, accurate and efficient way,
with the Beta Imager and the Micro Imager.
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Digital autoradiography
The Beta Imager, like the Micro Imager, relies on a digital detection of the beta emissions after conversion into photons. This principle makes the systems fast (up to 500 faster than film), real time (you can visualize the image while the signal is being acquired), and accurate: excellent sensitivity and linear dynamic range over 5 orders of magnitude. What's more, this digital detection can discriminate more information than what film does: the energy of the emission and its precise timing. Acquisitions can therefore be processed to discriminate different isotopes, with seperation based on either decay or energy differences.- Ultra fast thanks to an excellent sensitivity: acquisition time is cut down to several hours, compared to several weeks for film or phosphore imaging.
- The systems have a unique sensitivity to tritium, being able to detect tritium levels as low as 0,007cpm/mm2.
- A very large variety of isotopes can be detected: all Beta emitters (14C, 32P, 35S, 125I), Gamma emitters (123I, 131I, 99mTc, 201Tl, 111In) and positrons from PET isotopes.
- Unique for its capacity to discriminate several isotopes with a single acquisition
Detection principles
Both systems rely on an efficient conversion of the emitted beta particle into photons, which are then detected by a CCD camera.
The algorithms that analyse the light spots and discriminate true signal from noise, and extract from the relevant spots the information of position, timing,
and possibly energy are another key feature common to both systems. Read more on...
High performance imagers
The Beta Imager: High throughput autoradiography
- Maximal field of view: 20 x 25 cm2, compatible with large tissue samples or 15 microscope slides
- Whole body tissue sections
- Spatial resolution down to 60 µm
The Micro Imager: High resolution autoradiography
- Sequential acquistion of 4 samples, with a field of view of 24 x 32 mm2 for each
- Possibility to combine autoradiography and bioluminescence on tissue sections
- Spatial resolution of 15 µm
A technique complementary to in vivo nuclear imaging
Biospace Lab's digital autoradiography systems presents significant interests to complement in vivo acquisitions with SPECT or PET. Indeed, autoradiography acquisitions only require the preparation of tissue sections since the imagers will detect the exact same labelling which have been used for the SPECT or PET acquisition. Furthermore, it can give the following additional information:- More accurate localization of the signal with a better resolution
- More precise quantification and the possibility to quantify precisely regions of interest
- Good repeatability of ex vivo acquisitions compared to the variability of in vivo acquisitions
Discover the wonderful world of multi labelling
The complexity of biology and medicine, and protocols that try to unveal the mysteries of this complexity, often underline the limitation of imaging technique. Single labelling has, for many applications, the critical disadvantage to be unable to correlate physiological or pathological phenomena:- Co-localization of different receptors, or receptors and messenger proteins
- Functional activity and pathiological events
- Comparison of gene expressions with a reference gene
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