Wang Shaowei, Budzevich Mikalai, Abdalah Mahmoud A, Balagurunathan Yoganand, Choi Jung W
Department of Medical Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA.
Small Animal Imaging Laboratory, Department of Cancer Physiology, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, Tampa, FL 33612, USA.
Pharmaceuticals (Basel). 2022 Feb 27;15(3):292. doi: 10.3390/ph15030292.
Microvascular disease is frequently found in major pathologies affecting vital organs, such as the brain, heart, and kidneys. While imaging modalities, such as ultrasound, computed tomography, single photon emission computed tomography, and magnetic resonance imaging, are widely used to visualize vascular abnormalities, the ability to non-invasively assess an organ's total vasculature, including microvasculature, is often limited or cumbersome. Previously, we have demonstrated proof of concept that non-invasive imaging of the total mouse vasculature can be achieved with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG)-labeled human erythrocytes and positron emission tomography/computerized tomography (PET/CT). In this work, we demonstrate that changes in the total vascular volume of the brain and left ventricular myocardium of normal rats can be seen after pharmacological vasodilation using 18F-FDG-labeled rat red blood cells (FDG RBCs) and microPET/CT imaging. FDG RBC PET imaging was also used to approximate the location of myocardial injury in a surgical myocardial infarction rat model. Finally, we show that FDG RBC PET imaging can detect relative differences in the degree of drug-induced intra-myocardial vasodilation between diabetic rats and normal controls. This FDG-labeled RBC PET imaging technique may thus be useful for assessing microvascular disease pathologies and characterizing pharmacological responses in the vascular bed of interest.
微血管疾病常见于影响重要器官（如脑、心脏和肾脏）的主要病理状况中。虽然诸如超声、计算机断层扫描、单光子发射计算机断层扫描和磁共振成像等成像方式被广泛用于可视化血管异常，但非侵入性评估包括微血管在内的器官整体脉管系统的能力往往有限或操作繁琐。此前，我们已证明用18F-氟脱氧葡萄糖（18F-FDG）标记的人红细胞和正电子发射断层扫描/计算机断层扫描（PET/CT）可实现对小鼠整体脉管系统的非侵入性成像这一概念验证。在这项工作中，我们证明使用18F-FDG标记的大鼠红细胞（FDG RBCs）和微型PET/CT成像，在药理学血管舒张后可观察到正常大鼠脑和左心室心肌的总血管体积变化。FDG RBC PET成像还用于在手术性心肌梗死大鼠模型中估算心肌损伤的位置。最后，我们表明FDG RBC PET成像可检测糖尿病大鼠和正常对照之间药物诱导的心肌内血管舒张程度的相对差异。因此，这种FDG标记的RBC PET成像技术可能有助于评估微血管疾病病理状况并表征感兴趣血管床中的药理学反应。
