TY  - JOUR
A1  - Schürmann, Christoph
A1  - Gremse, Felix
A1  - Jo, Hanjoong
A1  - Kießling, Fabian
A1  - Brandes, Ralf
T1  - Micro-CT technique is well suited for documentation of remodeling processes in murine carotid arteries
T2  - PLoS One
N2  - Background: The pathomechanisms of atherosclerosis and vascular remodelling are under intense research. Only a few in vivo tools to study these processes longitudinally in animal experiments are available. Here, we evaluated the potential of micro-CT technology.
Methods: Lumen areas of the common carotid arteries (CCA) in the ApoE-/- partial carotid artery ligation mouse model were compared between in vivo and ex vivo micro-CT technique and serial histology in a total of 28 animals. AuroVist-15 nm nanoparticles were used as in vivo blood pool contrast agent in a Skyscan 1176 micro-CT at resolution of 18 μmeter voxel size and a mean x-ray dose of 0.5 Gy. For ex vivo imaging, animals were perfused with MicroFil and imaged at 9 μmeter voxel size. Lumen area was evaluated at postoperative days 7, 14, and 28 first by micro-CT followed by histology.
Results: In vivo micro-CT and histology revealed lumen loss starting at day 14. The lumen profile highly correlated (r = 0.79, P<0.0001) between this two methods but absolute lumen values obtained by histology were lower than those obtained by micro-CT. Comparison of in vivo and ex vivo micro-CT imaging revealed excellent correlation (r = 0.83, P<0.01). Post mortem micro-CT yielded a higher resolution than in vivo micro-CT but there was no statistical difference of lumen measurements in the partial carotid artery ligation model.
Conclusion: These data demonstrate that in vivo micro-CT is a feasible and accurate technique with low animal stress to image remodeling processes in the murine carotid artery.
Y1  - 2015
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/38000
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-380009
SN  - 1932-6203
N1  - Copyright: © 2015 Schürmann et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
VL  - 10
IS  - (6): e0130374
SP  - 1
EP  - 11
PB  - PLoS
CY  - Lawrence, Kan.
ER  -