SAFIR-I: Design and Performance of a High-Rate Preclinical PET Insert for MRI.

(1) Background: Small Animal Fast Insert for MRI detector I (SAFIR-I) is a preclinical Positron Emission Tomography (PET) insert for the Bruker BioSpec 70/30 Ultra Shield Refrigerated (USR) preclinical 7T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system. It is designed explicitly for high-rate kinetic studies in mice and rats with injected activities reaching 500MBq, enabling truly simultaneous quantitative PET and Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging with time frames of a few seconds in length. (2) Methods: SAFIR-I has an axial field of view of 54.