The effect of anaesthesia on 18F-FDG uptake in the rat brain: A fully conscious dynamic study using motion correction

Anaesthesia is used in preclinical positron emission tomography (PET) studies to ensure that no motion of the animal occurs during the scan. The effect of the anaesthesia in brain imaging on the tracer or drug under study is not always known, and this may confound the results of the study and how they are translated to the clinic. Using developed motion correction techniques, we present results from a study of the effect of isoflurane on FDG uptake in the rat brain using fully awake tube-bound, but unrestrained, rats. The study involved dynamic scans of both awake and asleep rats. We report here on 2 rat studies. A consistent increased uptake at steady-state of FDG in the awake rat brains was observed, when compared to the asleep scans.