Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan.
CASTEM Co., Ltd., Fukuyama, Japan.
Surg Today. 2022 Apr;52(4):715-720. doi: 10.1007/s00595-021-02396-1. Epub 2021 Oct 25.
Microfocus computed tomography (micro-CT) has not been widely used at high radiation intensity (industrial micro-CT) in life science fields. In this preliminary study, we investigated its potential value in the detection of micro-hepatic tumors in a mouse model.
The liver with micro-hepatic tumors was surgically resected en-bloc from mice, and examined with industrial micro-CT and lower intensity micro-CT (small animal micro-CT). The number of hepatic tumors was manually counted on serial images. Then, the accuracy of each technique was determined by preparing matching liver sections and comparing the number of tumors identified in a conventional pathological examination.
The number of hepatic tumors evaluated with industrial micro-CT showed high concordance with the results of the pathological examinations (intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC]: 0.984; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.959-0.994). On the other hand, the number of hepatic tumors evaluated with the small animal micro-CT showed low concordance with the number identified in the pathological examinations (ICC: 0.533; 95% CI 0.181-0.815).
Industrial micro-CT improved the detection of small structures in resected specimens, and might be a promising solution for life science research.
微焦点计算机断层扫描（micro-CT）在生命科学领域尚未广泛应用于高强度辐射（工业 micro-CT）。在本初步研究中，我们研究了其在检测小鼠模型中微小肝肿瘤中的潜在价值。
通过手术整块切除带有微小肝肿瘤的肝脏，并用工业 micro-CT 和低强度 micro-CT（小动物 micro-CT）进行检查。在连续图像上手动计数肝肿瘤数量。然后，通过准备匹配的肝切片并比较常规病理检查中识别的肿瘤数量来确定每种技术的准确性。
工业 micro-CT 评估的肝肿瘤数量与病理检查结果高度一致（组内相关系数 [ICC]：0.984；95%置信区间 [CI] 0.959-0.994）。另一方面，小动物 micro-CT 评估的肝肿瘤数量与病理检查中识别的肿瘤数量一致性较低（ICC：0.533；95% CI 0.181-0.815）。
工业 micro-CT 提高了对切除标本中小结构的检测能力，可能是生命科学研究的一种有前途的解决方案。
