Abstract
Noninvasive imaging of the murine pulmonary vasculature is challenging due to the small size of the animal, limits of resolution of the imaging technology, terminal nature of the procedure, or the need for intravenous contrast. We report the application of laboratory-based high-speed, high-resolution x-ray imaging, and image analysis to detect quantitative changes in the pulmonary vascular tree over time in the same animal without the need for intravenous contrast. Using this approach, we detected an increased number of vessels in the pulmonary vascular tree of animals after 30 min of recovery from a brief exposure to inspired gas with 10% oxygen plus 5% carbon dioxide (mean ± standard deviation: 2193 ± 382 at baseline vs. 6177 ± 1171 at 30 min of recovery; P < 0.0001). In a separate set of animals, we showed that the total pulmonary blood volume increased (P = 0.0412) while median vascular diameter decreased from 0.20 mm (IQR: 0.15-0.28 mm) to 0.18 mm (IQR: 0.14-0.26 mm; P = 0.0436) over the respiratory cycle from end-expiration to end-inspiration. These findings suggest that the noninvasive, nonintravenous contrast imaging approach reported here can detect dynamic responses of the murine pulmonary vasculature and may be a useful tool in studying these responses in models of disease.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | e13875 |
Journal | Physiological Reports |
Volume | 6 |
Issue number | 19 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was funded by National Institutes of Health grant K08HL125806 (HJ), National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Project Grant APP1055116 (AF), and a Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment grant (MASSIVE project number NCIy40)(AF), Australian Research Council - Discovery Project DP150102240 (grant recipient Andreas Fouras), Australian Research Council - Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE180101133 (grant recipient Stephen Dubsky).
Funding Information:
Funding Information This work was funded by National Institutes of Health grant K08HL125806 (HJ), National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Project Grant APP1055116 (AF), and a Multi-modal Australian ScienceS Imaging and Visualisation Environment grant (MASSIVE project number NCIy40)(AF), Australian Research Council - Discovery Project DP150102240 (grant recipient Andreas Fouras), Australian Research Council - Discovery Early Career Researcher Award DE180101133 (grant recipient Stephen Dubsky). The authors thank Drs. Wolfgang Kuebler and Erik Swenson for thoughtful discussions and editorial advice.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors. Physiological Reports published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of The Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society.
Keywords
- 4DCT
- in vivo imaging
- micro-CT
- pulmonary vasculature
PubMed: MeSH publication types
- Journal Article
- Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
- Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't