. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Dec 30.

Published in final edited form as: Immunol Cell Biol. 2012 Dec 4;91(4):10.1038/icb.2012.72. doi: 10.1038/icb.2012.72

Table 1.

Imaging modalities to study macrophage function in cardiovascular disease

Modality	Imaging targets	Spatial resolution	Pros	Cons	Preclinical	clincal
Intravital microscopy	Single cell behavior in live animal, including motion, interaction, release, recruitment	µm	Cellular resolution, dynamic	Penetration depth <1mm, invasive	+	−
OCT	Cells in arterial vessel wall	µm	Highest resolution of clinical techniques	Limited specificity, not quantitative, invasive	+	+
FMT	Cell population dynamics, cellular function such as protease activity	1mm	Quantitative, multiple targets, high thorughput	Limited to rodents	+	−
MRI	Cell population imaged with nanoparticles	100µm to 0.5mm	Combined with excellent anatomic and functional data	Semiquatitative	+	+
PET SPECT	Cell population imaged with ¹⁸FDG or nanoparticles (preclinical), protease presence	1mm to 1cm	Quantitative, highest sensitivity of macoscopic techniques	Expensive, radiation, low throughput	+	+

Abbreviations: FMT, fluorescence molecular tomography; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging; OCT, optical coherence tomography; PET, positron emission tomography; SPECT, single-photon emission computed tomography; ¹⁸FDG, ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose.