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Approach to Assessing Myocardial Perfusion in Rats Using Static [13N]-Ammonia Images and a Small-Animal PET

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Abstract

Purpose

Semi-quantitative, static positron emission tomography (PET) has been used to perform an initial approach to the assessment of [13N]-ammonia perfusion studies aimed to elucidating the effect of injecting human embryonic stem cell-derived (hES) hemangioblasts on infarcted rat hearts.

Procedures

Female NIH nude rats underwent occlusion of the left anterior descending coronary artery for 30 min before reperfusion. Either one million hES-derived hemangioblasts (n = 5) or control media (n = 4) were injected into the site of the infarct 1 day post-myocardial infarction (MI) under high-resolution echocardiography guidance. PET imaging was performed 6 weeks after MI induction, and uptake polar maps were created by sampling the left ventricle at equidistant slices from the base to the apex and measuring the average myocardium value at three contiguous voxels to minimize partial volume effects. Statistical comparison between treatment and control groups was done with a Mann–Whitney U test.

Results

Myocardium uptake ratios for treated and untreated subjects show statistically significant difference (98% certainty).

Conclusions

The straightforward procedure described here (similar to those commonly used in clinical routine) was sufficient to yield statistically significant perfusion differences between the treated and untreated animals despite the small sample size.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by the RETIC-RECAVA program, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, Spain.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Bioingeniería e Ingeniería Aeroespacial, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Avda. de la Universidad 30, 28911, Leganés, Madrid, Spain

    Juan José Vaquero & Manuel Desco

  2. Center for Molecular and Functional Imaging, University of California San Francisco, 185 Berry Street, Suite 350, 94107, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Dong-Wei Gao, Stephen Bacharach, Henry VanBrocklin, Qizhi Fang, Randall Lee & Michael Dae

  3. Unidad de Medicina y Cirugía Experimental, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Dr Esquerdo 46, 28007, Madrid, Spain

    Carmen García-Villaba & Manuel Desco

Authors
  1. Juan José Vaquero
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  2. Dong-Wei Gao
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  3. Carmen García-Villaba
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  4. Stephen Bacharach
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  5. Henry VanBrocklin
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  6. Qizhi Fang
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  7. Manuel Desco
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  8. Randall Lee
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  9. Michael Dae
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juan José Vaquero.

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Vaquero, J.J., Gao, DW., García-Villaba, C. et al. Approach to Assessing Myocardial Perfusion in Rats Using Static [13N]-Ammonia Images and a Small-Animal PET. Mol Imaging Biol 14, 541–545 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11307-011-0538-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11307-011-0538-7

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