HEL-8021 Preclinical PET and Complementary Methods in Small Animal Molecular Imaging - 5 stp

PhD course. This course is available as a singular course.

The course is organized by the Department of Clinical Medicine and the Norwegian Research School in Medical Imaging (MEDIM).

Mandatory prerequisites:
Passed course in Experimental animal science for researchers (Category C).

Documentation of passed course must be sent to Section for Research Services, Faculty of Health Sciences. Students who have taken HEL-8014 or HEL-6320 at the University of Tromsø do not have to send in any documentation.

To take PhD courses you need at a minimum a master¿s degree or equivalent, or admission to a Medical Student Research Program.

Applicants, who are affiliated with the national network "Norwegian Research School in Medical Imagining" (MedIm), will be prioritized for admission if the number of applicants exceeds the course capacity of 10 students.

• Describe the theoretical foundation of preclinical molecular imaging as a modern research tool.
• Describe and discuss advantages and limitations with modern techniques for in vivo, ex vivo and in vitro preclinical molecular imaging, including multicellular tumour spheroid (MTS), frozen section autoradiography biodistribition and PET/SPECT/CT.
• Have a basic understanding for radiochemistry, radiopharmacy, biodistribution of tracers and the factors affecting the choice of tracer for a specific imaging task.
• Plan, prepare and perform a basic MTS experiment, including preparation of cell cultures to be used for MTS's, preparation of the MTS's, collecting data and analyzing the results.
• Plan, prepare and perform a standard in vitro frozen section autoradiography experiment, including preparation and cryosectioning of frozen tissue, incubating it with a radioactive PET or SPECT tracer, exposing and scanning the image plate and analyzing the resulting images.
• Plan, prepare and perform a standard ex vivo biodistribution experiment, including sacrificing the animal after PET-tracer administration, dissection and removing the organs of interest, measuring the radioactivity in each organ using wellcounter, analyze, correlate and compare the result with in vivo imaging.
• Plan, prepare and perform a standard in vivo PET/SPECT/CT experiment, including intravenous administration of a PET or SPECT tracer, preparing a static or dynamic scan protocol, performing the scan, reconstructing the images, analyzing and extracting useful information from the static or dynamic images, for example specific uptake values (SUV) and time activity curves.

Work requirements:

• Attendance at the course, including lectures, demonstrations and laboratory exercises.
• Passed reports on all of the laboratory exercises.

Examination and assessment:
Home examination, 10 pages, graded pass or fail. The examination can be answered in any Scandinavian language or English.

Continuation exam:
There will be the option of one supplementary examination if a fail grade is achieved at the first attempt. Application deadline for continuation exam is January 15th.