Speaker
Description
Positron emission tomography (PET) enables three-dimensional visualization of radioactive tracers in plants, but conventional systems are costly and not optimized for plant research. In this study, we characterized the count-rate performance of our low-cost plant-dedicated PET system and demonstrated dynamic imaging of living plants for the first time.Count-rate measurements using a carbon-11 (¹¹C) source yielded a peak NECR of 161.6 kcps at 16.7 MBq. Dynamic imaging of a living eggplant, with ¹¹CO₂ supplied to a selected leaf via photosynthesis, successfully visualized tracer migration from the source leaf to the fruit and adjacent stem over three hours.To our knowledge, this is the first report of dynamic PET imaging in living plants using a dedicated low-cost system.