Application of 18F-FDG microPET/CT in the screening of cerebral ischemia reperfusion models

Abstract

Objective To investigate the feasibility of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) microPET/CT in the screening of cerebral ischemia reperfusion (CIR) models. Methods The suture-occluded method was used to establish CIR rat models with reversible middle cerebral artery embolism. After that only awake rats whose Zea-Longa scores were 1-4 were selected for the following experiments, and 18 male SD rats were selected. Garcia scale with 18 points was used to evaluate the neurological function of rats at 2 and 24 h post-operation. At the same time points, 18F-FDG was injected into caudal vein after anesthesia and microPET/CT scan was conducted at 40 min post-injection. Visual and semi-quantitative analyses were adopted to analyze the images. The autopsy and HE staining were performed on accidentally dead rats. The other alive rats were sacrificed after microPET/CT scan at 24 h post-operation, and their brain tissues were taken out quickly to detect the infarction by triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC) staining. The pathological results were taken as the gold criteria. Fisher exact test was used to compare the difference of accuracy for diagnosing CIR models between neurological function score (NFS) and microPET/CT. Results According to the pathology, there were 11 CIR models, 4 with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), 3 with SAH and cerebral hemorrhage. Between 8-12 h post-operation, 4 rats died accidentally. At 2 h post-operation, the diagnostic accuracies of NFS and microPET/CT were 11/18 and 15/18 (P 0.05). Conclusion 18F-FDG microPET/CT is better than NFS in screening CIR models in early stage. Key words: Brain ischemia; Reperfusion; Positron-emission tomography; Tomography, X-ray computed; Deoxyglucose; Rats