The overall mission of the UW Carbone Cancer Center (UWCCC) Small Animal Imaging Facility (SAIF) is to provide innovative state-of-the-art, affordable, noninvasive, high-resolution in-vivo and ex-vivo imaging support to UWCCC investigators and cancer center members who utilize small animal models in their research.

The facility director and manager provide consultation with investigators about imaging methodologies most suited to answer their biological questions. Suggestions typically include which modality(s) may be the most appropriate, whether or not contrast agents will provide additional information and if so which ones are most appropriate, the degree of spatial resolution needed, choice of anesthesia, timing of scanning, inclusion of appropriate controls, and statistical relevance. Investigators are able to select various levels of support ranging from image acquisition alone, to acquisition and reconstruction, to image interpretation and finally to media presentation.

It is our intent to acquire the data set and then to educate the investigators to be able to work up and interpret the images on their own. We provide Amira (v4.1, TGS, Inc, San Diego, CA) based workstations operating on a 64-bit Windows platform (XP Pro-64) which is both user friendly and extremely powerful in terms of 2- and 3-D image viewing, manipulation, and quantitative analysis of large imaging files. We have a Siemens Inveon Research Workplace 3D image image fusion and analysis workstation. This state-of-the-art workstation, which is based on a 64-bit/16GB RAM Windows platform, permits sophisticated 3-D visualization and manipulation of multiple data sets in a single image as well as analysis of static, gated, and dynamic data as well as output in DICOM format for use with other imaging platforms.

Learn more about the Small Animal Imaging Facility's Scientific Accomplishments. 

Funding received from the UWCCC Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG) for published research, including the use of UWCCC Shared Resources to generate or analyze data, or conduct clinical trials, needs to reference the UWCCC. See Acknowledging UWCCC in Publications, Posters and Presentations.