Multimodal Whole Animal Imaging Core

The Multimodal Whole Animal Imaging Core will operate a unique animal imaging facility under BSL-4 containment in which the synergies of multiple imaging modalities will be available for discoveries about infectious diseases studied at the NEIDL.  Elucidation of in vivo kinetics of organism pathogenesis, treatment response and immune protection studies of agents, such as tuberculosis and the hemorrhagic fever viruses in whole animals have been severely hampered by the lack of advanced whole animal imaging systems capable of routine operations in a BSL 4. This is particularly true for the assessment of pathogen induced cellular and structural changes in larger animals, in which cross-sectional post mortem studies had to substitute for the more desirable longitudinal in vivo studies. The primary objective of this Core will be to circumvent such technical challenges and utilize recent and anticipated innovations in multimodal imaging technologies, including custom-designed, one-of-the-kind BSL-4 compatible 4.7 Tesla whole animal MRI scanner, Fluorescence optical tomography, and X-ray Computed Tomography. In-house developed multimodal imaging software packages designed specifically for emerging infectious diseases' needs will facilitate further the quantitative and multimodal analyses of the data to gain insights into the pathogenesis and treatment of major infectious diseases that are public health concerns.