In 1999, Weissleder et al. of Harvard University in the United States proposed the concept of molecular imaging—the application of imaging methods to conduct qualitative and quantitative studies at the cellular and molecular levels of biological processes in vivo.

Rather than understanding disease-specific molecular events, traditional imaging relies mostly on macroscopic changes in physical, physiological, and metabolic processes in disease states. Molecular imaging uses specific molecular probes to track and image targets. This shift from nonspecific imaging to specific imaging has major implications for disease biology, early detection, characterization, assessment, and treatment. Molecular imaging technology enables in vivo imaging of living animals, and its emergence is attributed to the development of molecular biology and cell biology, the use of transgenic animal models, the use of new imaging drugs, highly specific probes, small animal imaging equipment development and many other factors.

At present, molecular imaging technology can be used to study and observe the expression or interaction process of specific cells, genes and molecules, detect multiple molecular events at the same time, track target cells, optimize drugs and gene therapy, and evaluate drug efficacy from the molecular and cellular levels. Imaging, assessing disease progression at the molecular pathological level, and tracking the effects of time, environment, development, and treatment in the same animal or patient.
Advantages of Molecular Imaging Molecular imaging has significant advantages over traditional in vitro imaging or cell culture.

First, molecular imaging can reflect the spatial and temporal distribution of cell or gene expression to understand relevant biological processes, specific gene functions and interactions in living animals.

Secondly, because the same research individual can be tracked repeatedly for a long time, it can improve the comparability of data, avoid the influence of individual differences on the test results, and do not need to kill model animals, saving a lot of scientific research costs.

Third, especially in drug development, molecular imaging is of epoch-making significance. According to the current statistical results, most of the drugs entering clinical research were terminated due to safety issues, resulting in a large waste of funds in clinical research. The advent of molecular imaging technology provides a broad space for solving this problem. It will enable drugs to obtain more detailed molecular or gene-level data by using molecular imaging methods in preclinical research, which is an area that cannot be understood by traditional methods, so molecular imaging will revolutionize the mode of new drug research sexual change. In the process of targeting or pharmaceutical research, molecular imaging can track and detect animal traits, and conduct direct observation and (quantitative) analysis of phenotypes;

Optical in vivo Imaging There are two main techniques, bioluminescence and fluorescence. Bioluminescence is the use of luciferase (Luciferase) gene to label cells or DNA, while fluorescence technology uses fluorescent reporter groups (GFP, RFP, Cyt and dyes, etc.) for labeling. Using a suite of very sensitive optical detection instruments allows researchers to directly monitor cellular activity and gene behavior in living organisms. Through this system, biological processes such as tumor growth and metastasis, the development of infectious diseases, and the expression of specific genes in living animals can be observed. The traditional animal experiment method requires slaughtering experimental animals at different time points to obtain data and obtain experimental results at multiple time points. In contrast, visible light in vivo imaging records the movement and changes of the same observation target (marked cells and genes) by recording the same group of subjects at different time points, and the data obtained are more authentic and credible.

Because X-rays are radioactive and have a fatal threat to tiny organisms, it is not suitable to use rays with too high energy for testing. It is difficult to track the pathological activity of living cells if the organism is lethal. Recently, research institutes have launched their own small animal CTs, equipped with UltraBright micro-focus light source provided by Juna Group. Under the condition of ensuring the clarity of the micro-focus, the power adjustment range is increased as much as possible. The power adjustment range is More than twice that of similar light sources in the market. Has super high performance. The major biological research institutes have successively launched CT equipment with excellent performance, which has added more vitality to the research of biological diseases in China.