Low-Cost 3D-Printed Tools Towards Robust Longitudinal Multi-Modal Pre-Clinical Imaging

1Window chamber models enable a range of preclinical in-vivo optical studies with high spatial resolution and contrast, most notably probing the tumour microenvironment (TME). However, there are multiple sources of experimental variability that can affect the quality of the resultant data, especially in the context of longitudinal data acquisition, where accurate registration between images acquired at different times is crucial to understanding changes to the spatially heterogeneous TME. Further, it is challenging to correlate the findings of these models to clinical imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which typically have much lower resolution and derive contrast from different physical mechanisms; yet such correlations may assist in the translation of window-chamber-derived basic preclinical insights into the clinic. Here, we describe the development and construction of a low-cost 3D-printable window chambers and compatible toolset to improve the accuracy, precision, and repeatability of longitudinal pre-clinical imaging and inter-modality co-registration at different spatial resolution scales. Such improvements in our novel multi-modal experimental pipeline may assist researchers in the acquisition and translation of TME biomarkers and other pre-clinical measurements from the window chamber model into the clinic.