Small animal scanning methods are common for preclinical efficacy evaluation of contrast agents, and naïve animal studies done on clinical scanners are becoming more prevalent. Unfortunately, scanning small animals on large-bore clinical scanners creates several challenges such as motion effects due to organ movement and very fast heart-rates. Here we provide a retrospective motion-correction algorithm for fast-heart-rate/free-breathing small animals based on diaphragm tracking. Results show a ten-fold reduction in baseline contrast region signal uncertainty and significant accuracy improvement of pharmacokinetic time-constant estimation.
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