Figure 1.

Tracers employed in the rat vertebral discitis-osteomyelitis (VDO) model. The ¹¹C-labeled tracers [¹¹C]PABA, [¹¹C]D-ala, and [¹¹C]D-met were recently developed by our laboratories and have been shown to be sensitive to the strain of Staphylococcus aureus studied. Both [¹⁸F]FDG and the single-photon emission computed tomography tracer [⁶⁷Ga]gallium citrate have been used clinically for decades, and applied to VDO, with the PET correlate [⁶⁸Ga]gallium citrate applied more recently to infected patients. The Enterobacteriaceae-sensitive [¹⁸F]FDS has been studied in numerous preclinical models of infection and humans and is not significantly accumulated in S aureus.