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Effect of emaciation and obesity on small-animal internal radiation dosimetry for positron-emitting radionuclides

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Abstract

Purpose

Rats are widely used in biomedical research involving molecular imaging and therefore the radiation dose to animals has become a concern. The weight of laboratory animals might change through emaciation or obesity as a result of their use in various research experiments including those investigating different diet types. In this work, we evaluated the effects of changes in body weight induced by emaciation and obesity on the internal radiation dose from common positron-emitting radionuclides.

Methods

A systematic literature review was performed to determine normal anatomical parameters for adult rats and evaluate how organs change with variations in total body weight. The ROBY rat anatomical model was then modified to produce a normal adult rat, and mildly, moderately and severely emaciated and obese rats. Monte Carlo simulations were performed using MCNPX to estimate absorbed fractions, specific absorbed fractions (SAFs) and S-values for these models using different positron-emitting radionuclides. The results obtained for the different models were compared to corresponding estimates from the normal rat model.

Results

The SAFs and S-values for most source–target pairs between the various anatomical models were not significantly different, except where the intestine and the total body were considered as source regions. For the intestine, irradiating other organs in the obese model, the SAFs in organs in the anterior region of the splanchnocoele (e.g. kidney, liver and stomach) increased slightly, whereas the SAFs in organs in the posterior region of the splanchnocoele (e.g. bladder and testes) decreased owing to the increase in the distance separating the intestine and posterior abdominal organs because of the rat epididymal fat pad. For the total body, irradiating other organs, the SAFs and S-values were inversely related to body weight.

Conclusion

The effect of obesity on internal radiation dose is insignificant in most conditions for common positron-emitting radionuclides. Emaciation increases the cross-absorbed dose to organs from surrounding tissues, which might be a notable issue in laboratory animal internal dosimetry.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under grant SNSF 31003A-125246, the Geneva Cancer League and the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Programme ISJRP 138866. The authors thank Dr. W. Paul Segars for providing the ROBY computational rat model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Geneva University Hospital, 1211, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Tianwu Xie & Habib Zaidi

  2. Geneva Neuroscience Center, Geneva University, 1205, Geneva, Switzerland

    Habib Zaidi

  3. Department of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, 9700 RB, Groningen, Netherlands

    Habib Zaidi

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  1. Tianwu Xie
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Correspondence to Habib Zaidi.

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Xie, T., Zaidi, H. Effect of emaciation and obesity on small-animal internal radiation dosimetry for positron-emitting radionuclides. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 40, 1748–1759 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-013-2485-9

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