Have you ever performed CT angiography in rats? I'm having some troubles with the contrast and the image resolution. Do you have any protocol to suggest?
See Stroke. 2012;43:888-891 for Synchrotron X-ray computed tomography in rats.
Thank you Damian, but I neet to inject the contrast thru the femoral vein
For angiography you can use the femoral vein to administer the contrast. You may just need a larger volume of contrast that is constantly infused.
If you are only interested in static contrast you can use a single bolus injection of a long residence contrast agent like Viscover ExiTron nano 12000 or NanoProbes - AuroVist-15. These long residence agents will allow imaging over the course of hours to days. This can be useful in a variety of vascular procedures where recurrent scans are necessary. You can also human clinical contrast agents but these require a constant infusion over the course of the scan due to the in creased filtration of the rat kidneys. You are ultimately limited to about 2ml total volume on a 200 gram rat to avoid cardiac distress. Your scanning protocol will be dependent on your contrast agent but you want to window your images to between soft tissue and bone. Here you should be able to pick out the vasculature depending on the size of the vessels and the resolution of your scan.
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