The global small animal imaging market that was valued at US$1.49 billion in the year 2013, is expected to reach US$2.74 billion by the year 2020, growing at a CAGR of 8.6% between the years 2014 and 2020. The global small animal imaging market basically supports the area of preclinical research, gene expression studies, and drug development with regard to preclinical imaging of rabbits, and rodents like mice, and rats. The features of the small animal imaging devices is quite similar to diagnostic devices that are used for diagnostics in human beings; the only area of difference being the size.
The small animal imaging devices commonly known as micro devices are comparatively smaller in size than the diagnostic devices used for humans. Micro-SPECT and micro MRI are the two most commonly used imaging devices in the global small animal imaging market. Useful information for understanding the working of pharmaceutical compounds in phase I and the preclinical stages is provided by molecular, pre-imaging, functional, and anatomical analyses. Apart from providing a foundation for further research, pre-imaging helps in the toxicity and safety analysis as well.
Regionally, the global small animal imaging market is led by Europe and North America due to factors like high rate of adoption of expensive devices, frequent product launches, and greater activities with regard to preclinical research. The rapidly growing markets in the global small animal imaging market are the Asia Pacific and Rest of the World. These two regions are primarily driven by greater industry based funding for carrying out pharmaceutical based preclinical research, and increasing number of CROs.
The growth and performance of the global small animal imaging market can be attributed to higher research funding activities, and greater technological advancements. There has been a surge in the demand for reagents because of increasing number of reagent manufacturers, frequent purchase, and high shelf life of the devices.
Most of the companies operating in the global small animal imaging market are focusing greatly on improving multimodal imaging devices that are MRI based, like MRI and PET devices. This trend is expected to drive the global small animal imaging market by way of greater growth opportunities in the years to come. The main growth inhibitors in the global small animal imaging market are limited access to nuclear imaging reagents, and slow rate of adoption propelled by steep development costs.
Some of the prominent players operating in the global small animal imaging market are Targeson, Inc., SCANCO Medical AG, Siemens AG, Promega Corporation, Perkin Elmer, Inc., Miltenyi Biotec GmbH, FujiFilm VisualSonics, Inc., LI-COR Biosciences, Inc., TriFoil Imaging, Inc., Bruker Corporation, Aspect Imaging, and Agilent Technologies, Inc.
