Preclinical time of flight imaging

A preclinical positron emission tomography (PET) imaging method comprising:

• acquiring time-of-flight localized PET imaging data from a plurality of non-human subjects that have been administered a radiopharmaceutical;
• and
• reconstructing the acquired time-of-flight localized PET imaging data to form an image representative of a distribution of radiopharmaceutical in a selected one or more of the non-human animal subjects, wherein the reconstructing comprises:
• identifying a sub-set of the time-of-flight localized PET imaging data associated with each of the selected one or more of the plurality of non-human animal subjects;
• discarding a portion of the time-of-flight localized PET imaging data identified based at least in part on time-of-flight localization information as not probative of the selected one or more of the plurality of non-human animal subjects;
• and
• reconstructing the acquired time-of-flight localized PET imaging data minus the discarded portion including reconstructing each sub-set to form an image representative of the distribution of radiopharmaceutical in the associated non-human animal subject.

A preclinical positron emission tomography (PET) scanner comprising:

• radiation detectors arranged to view an examination region;
• a subject support assembly configured to support a plurality of preclinical subjects in the examination region for simultaneous PET imaging;
• coincidence electronics configured to acquire time-of-flight localized PET imaging data from the plurality of preclinical subjects using the radiation detectors;
• and
• reconstruction electronics configured to (i) perform a filtering operation based at least in part on the time-of-flight information, the filtering operation including associating time-of-flight localized PET imaging data with individual preclinical subjects of the plurality of preclinical subjects to identify a sub-set of the time-of-flight localized PET imaging data associated with each preclinical subject of the plurality of preclinical subjects;
• and (ii) separately reconstruct each sub-set of the filtered time-of-flight localized PET imaging data to form images representative of radiopharmaceutical distribution in the plurality of preclinical subjects.