PET quantification of cerebral oxygen metabolism in small animals

Understanding cerebral oxygen metabolism is of great importance in both clinical diagnosis and animal experiments because oxygen is a fundamental source of brain energy and supports brain functional activities. Since small animals such as rats are widely used to study various diseases including cerebral ischemia, cerebrovascular diseases, and neurodegenerative diseases, the development of a noninvasive in vivo measurement method of cerebral oxygen metabolic parameters such as oxygen extraction fraction (OEF) and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2) as well as cerebral blood flow (CBF) and cerebral blood volume (CBV) has been a priority. Although positron emission tomography (PET) with (15)O labeled gas tracers has been recognized as a powerful way to evaluate cerebral oxygen metabolism in humans, this method could not be applied to rats due to technical problems and there were no reports of PET measurement of cerebral oxygen metabolism in rats until an (15)O-O2 injection method was developed a decade ago. Herein, we introduce an intravenous administration method using two types of injectable (15)O-O2 and an (15)O-O2 gas inhalation method through an airway placed in the trachea, which enables oxygen metabolism measurements in rats.