Quantifying and correcting for tail vein extravasation in small animal PET scans in cancer research: is there an impact on therapy assessment?

Background Tail vein injection under short anesthesia is the most commonly used route for administering radiopharmaceuticals. However, the small caliber of the vein in rodents may lead to tracer extravasation and thereby compromise quantitative accuracy of PET. We aimed to evaluate a method for correction of interstitial radiotracer leakage in the context of pre-clinical therapeutic response assessment.