Department of Chemical and Biological Physics, Weizmann Institute, 7610001, Rehovot, Israel.
Department of Biological Regulation, Weizmann Institute, 7610001, Rehovot, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2020 Oct 2;10(1):16380. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-72885-9.
Diffusion-weighted MRI on rodents could be valuable to evaluate pregnancy-related dysfunctions, particularly in knockout models whose biological nature is well understood. Echo Planar Imaging's sensitivity to motions and to air/water/fat heterogeneities, complicates these studies in the challenging environs of mice abdomens. Recently developed MRI methodologies based on SPatiotemporal ENcoding (SPEN) can overcome these obstacles, and deliver diffusivity maps at ≈150 µm in-plane resolutions. The present study exploits these capabilities to compare the development in wildtype vs vascularly-altered mice. Attention focused on the various placental layers-deciduae, labyrinth, trophoblast, fetal vessels-that the diffusivity maps could resolve. Notable differences were then observed between the placental developments of wildtype vs diseased mice; these differences remained throughout the pregnancies, and were echoed by perfusion studies relying on gadolinium-based dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI. Longitudinal monitoring of diffusivity in the animals throughout the pregnancies also showed differences between the development of the fetal brains in the wildtype and vascularly-altered mice, even if these disparities became progressively smaller as the pregnancies progressed. These results are analyzed on the basis of the known physiology of normal and preeclamptic pregnancies, as well as in terms of the potential that they might open for the early detection of disorders in human pregnancies.
在啮齿动物中进行扩散加权 MRI 可能对评估与妊娠相关的功能障碍具有重要价值，特别是在那些对其生物学特性有深入了解的基因敲除模型中。回波平面成像对运动和空气/水/脂肪异质性的敏感性，使得这些在小鼠腹部挑战性环境下的研究变得复杂。最近基于 SPatiotemporal ENcoding (SPEN) 的 MRI 方法学可以克服这些障碍，并以 ≈150 µm 的面内分辨率提供扩散图。本研究利用这些功能来比较野生型和血管异常小鼠的发育情况。研究关注了扩散图可以分辨的各种胎盘层——蜕膜、胎盘绒膜、滋养层、胎儿血管。然后观察到野生型和患病小鼠的胎盘发育之间存在显著差异；这些差异在整个妊娠过程中持续存在，并通过依赖钆基动态对比增强 MRI 的灌注研究得到了印证。在整个妊娠过程中对动物进行扩散性的纵向监测也显示了野生型和血管异常小鼠胎儿大脑发育之间的差异，尽管这些差异随着妊娠的进展逐渐变小。这些结果是基于正常和子痫前期妊娠的已知生理学进行分析的，同时也考虑了它们可能为人类妊娠疾病的早期检测提供的潜力。
