Available Sites and Instrumentation:

The IVI ACF is located in three sites, the headquarters being the Basic Medical Sciences Building at the Semmelweis University, 37-43 Tűzoltó utca, 1094 Budapest. The ACF HQ comprises two isotope laboratories and three imaging laboratory rooms. Permissions are in place to handle more than 80 isotopes for tracing, imaging and therapeutics and X-ray application. In addition, a local isotope-containing animal facility is also associated with the ACF. Two other sites are also involved, the Cardiovascular Centre (68 Városmajor u, 1122 Budapest) and the Basic Sciences Centre (4 Nagyvárad tér, 1082).

• Equipment for Quantitative Functional Molecular Imaging

• Small Animal Ultrahigh Resolution Optoacoustics and Doppler Ultrasound Imaging System: Iconeus ONE (Iconeus, France)

• PET/MRI system: nanoScan PM 3T (Mediso, Hungary)

• SPECT/CT system: nanoScan SPECT/CT 4R (Mediso, Hungary)

• Fast and easy MRI system: nanoScan 1T (Mediso, Hungary)

• Small Animal Ultrahigh Resolution Ultrasound System: Vevo 3100 (Fujifilm, Canada)

• Optical Imaging Systems: FOBI (Neoscience, Korea);

• Translational High Resolution Ultrasound System: Vivid E95 (GE, US)

• Dedicated Clinical SPECT/PET/CT System for large animals: AnyScan TRIO (Mediso, Hungary)

• Equipment for Structural Micro-Imaging
  • Ex vivo Micro-CT System: Skyscan 1272 (Bruker, Belgium)

Repertoire of Imaging Possibilities by Imaging Methods:

• High Resolution MicroCT imaging Ex Vivo:
  • The platform provides resolution not possible with live imaging due to the confounding effect of even minute movements in live animals.
  • Microscopy resolution imaging on all hard and soft tissues
  • Assessment of disease progression
  • Fast reconstruction of CT images

• SPECT/CT applications
  • Biomarker identification
  • Spatial and temporal measurement of thyroid, cardiac, hepatic and kidney functions
  • Bio-distribution and -availability of isotope-labeled theragnostic molecules already in clinical use or under development
  • Imaging of stem cell functions

• PET/MRI multimodal applications
  • High spatial resolutions: 100 μm (MRI), 700 μm (PET) – Cellular, subcellular, and molecular identification
  • High sensitivity: femtoM/mg tissue
  • Anatomical localization, exact morphology of metabolic foreground
  • Radiolabeling-based assessment of tissue metabolic processes
  • Special focus in neurotransmitter, oncology, regeneration and immune-system studies

• Fluorescent Imaging
  • Very high throughput easy-to-use phenotyping of reporter animals without the need of external luciferase injection and ATP access to tissue
  • Identification of autofluorescence-related processes
  • Tumor and cell tracking and time-series imaging of tumor bio-distribution or cell-based therapies

• Ultra-high-frequency and 4D ultrasound imaging applications
  • A platform with portable ultrasound unit operating from 10 up to 70MHz
  • Applicable for mice, rats, and other larger animals
  • Focused, but not limited to, cardiovascular applications
  • fUS: High-resolution quantitation of cerebral blood flow in mice and rats for the fast, on-the-fly analysis of blood flow changes in stroke, inflammation, intestinal microbiome and cardiovascular model mice.