A preclinical positron emission tomography (PET) imaging method includes acquiring time-of-flight localized PET imaging data from one or more non-human animal subjects and reconstructing the acquired data to form an image. In an illustrative PET scanner includes: radiation detectors (12) viewing an examination region a subject support assembly (14) supporting a plurality of preclinical subjects in the examination region for simultaneous PET imaging coincidence electronics (20) acquiring time-of-flight localized PET imaging data from the preclinical subjects using the radiation detectors and reconstruction electronics (22) that (i) perform a filtering operation based at least in part on the time-of flight information, the filtering operation including at least one of discarding non-probative time-of-flight localized PET imaging data and associating time-of-flight localized PET imaging data with individual preclinical subjects and (ii) reconstruct the filtered data to form images of the preclinical subjects.
