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Most studies of gut microbiota have focused on relationships between a specific disease and the presence/abundance of one or a few bacterial species/genera. Whether the spatial and temporal distribution of gut microbiota, as a whole, affects or correlates with health is unknown, largely due to the absence of tools for dynamically monitoring the overall gut microbiota landscape inside living subjects. Here, we describe a novel, noninvasive, live imaging method for gut microbiota using 2-deoxy-2-[¹⁸F]fluoro-d-sorbitol (¹⁸F-FDS), a compound that specifically labeled gut bacteria in mice and hamsters following oral administration. Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) scanning showed that the radiolabel signal was concentrated in the gut (especially the large intestine), was absent when mice gut microbiota was depleted by antibiotic treatment, and was restored after transplanting antibiotic …