Heverhagen Johannes T, Hahn Horst K, Wegmann Michael, Herz Udo, Shaffer Whitaker Chastity D, Matschl Volker, Alfke Heiko
Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Philipps University, 35033 Marburg, Germany.
MAGMA. 2004 Nov;17(2):80-5. doi: 10.1007/s10334-004-0053-9. Epub 2004 Oct 5.
Small animal models are widely used to study various pathologies. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows investigation of these animals in a non-invasive way. Therefore, the aim of our study was to develop and evaluate a low-cost approach to measure lung volumes in small animal MRI using a clinical scanner and a specially designed RF coil. Five mice (three of an established emphysema model and two controls) were investigated in a 1.0-T clinical scanner using a specially built small animal saddle coil and three different three-dimensional sequences; overall imaging time was approximately 16 min. Lung volumes were calculated from these images using an interactive watershed transform algorithm for semi-automatic image segmentation. The gold standard for the volume measurement was water displacement after surgical explantation. MRI measured volumes correlated significantly with ex vivo measurements on the explanted lungs (r = 0.99 to 0.89; p < 0.05). Mean lung volume in emphysema model mice was larger than in controls. High-resolution, small animal MRI using a clinical scanner is feasible for volumetric analysis and provides an alternative to a dedicated small animal scanner.
小动物模型被广泛用于研究各种病理学。磁共振成像（MRI）能够以非侵入性方式对这些动物进行研究。因此，我们研究的目的是开发并评估一种低成本方法，使用临床扫描仪和专门设计的射频线圈来测量小动物MRI中的肺容积。使用专门构建的小动物鞍形线圈和三种不同的三维序列，在一台1.0-T临床扫描仪中对五只小鼠（三只已建立的肺气肿模型小鼠和两只对照小鼠）进行了研究；总成像时间约为16分钟。使用交互式分水岭变换算法对这些图像进行半自动图像分割，从而计算肺容积。容积测量的金标准是手术切除后水置换法。MRI测量的容积与切除肺的离体测量结果显著相关（r = 0.99至0.89；p < 0.05）。肺气肿模型小鼠的平均肺容积大于对照小鼠。使用临床扫描仪进行高分辨率小动物MRI对于容积分析是可行的，并且为专用小动物扫描仪提供了一种替代方案。
