The increasing worldwide prevalence of obesity, fatty liver diseases and the emerging understanding of the important roles lipids play in various other diseases is generating significant interest in lipid research. Lipid visualization in particular can play a critical role in understanding functional relations in lipid metabolism. We investigated the potential of multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT) as a novel modality to non-invasively visualize lipids in laboratory mice around the 930nm spectral range. Using an obesity-induced non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) mouse model, we examined whether MSOT could detect and differentiate different grades of hepatic steatosis and monitor the accumulation of lipids in the liver quantitatively over time, without the use of contrast agents, i.e. in label-free mode. Moreover, we demonstrate the efficacy of using the real-time clearance kinetics of indocyanine green (ICG) in the liver, monitored by MSOT, as a biomarker to evaluate the organ’s function and assess the severity of NAFLD. This study establishes MSOT as an efficient imaging tool for lipid visualization in preclinical studies, particularly for the assessment of NAFLD.

中文翻译：

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小鼠肝脏脂肪变性发展的功能性多光谱光声断层扫描成像

全球范围内肥胖、脂肪肝疾病的患病率不断增加，以及人们对脂质在各种其他疾病中所起的重要作用的认识不断加深，引起了人们对脂质研究的浓厚兴趣。脂质可视化在理解脂质代谢的功能关系方面尤其可以发挥关键作用。我们研究了多光谱光声断层扫描 (MSOT) 作为一种在 930 nm 光谱范围内非侵入性地可视化实验室小鼠脂质的新方法的潜力。使用肥胖诱导的非酒精性脂肪性肝病 (NAFLD) 小鼠模型，我们检查了 MSOT 是否可以检测和区分不同级别的肝脏脂肪变性，并在不使用造影剂的情况下定量监测肝脏中脂质随时间的积累。IE。在无标签模式下。此外，我们证明了使用 MSOT 监测的肝脏中吲哚菁绿 (ICG) 的实时清除动力学作为评估器官功能和评估 NAFLD 严重程度的生物标志物的功效。本研究将 MSOT 确立为临床前研究中脂质可视化的有效成像工具，特别是用于评估 NAFLD。