Quantification of lung damage in an elastase-induced mouse model of emphysema

  • Authors:
  • Arrate Muñoz-Barrutia;Mario Ceresa;Xabier Artaechevarria;Luis M. Montuenga;Carlos Ortiz-de-Solorzano

  • Affiliations:
  • Cancer Imaging Laboratory, Center for Applied Medical Research, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain;Cancer Imaging Laboratory, Center for Applied Medical Research, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain;Cancer Imaging Laboratory, Center for Applied Medical Research, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain;Biomarkers Laboratory, Center for Applied Medical Research, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain;Cancer Imaging Laboratory, Center for Applied Medical Research, University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Biomedical Imaging - Special issue on Lung Imaging Data Analysis
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

To define the sensitivity of microcomputed tomography- (micro-CT-) derived descriptors for the quantification of lung damage caused by elastase instillation. Materials and Methods. The lungs of 30 elastase treated and 30 control A/J mice were analyzed 1, 6, 12, and 24 hours and 7 and 17 days after elastase instillation using (i) breath-hold-gated micro-CT, (ii) pulmonary function tests (PFTs), (iii) RT-PCR for RNA cytokine expression, and (iv) histomorphometry. For the latter, an automatic, parallel software toolset was implemented that computes the airspace enlargement descriptors: mean linear intercept (Lm) and weighted means of airspace diameters (D0, D1, and D2). A Support Vector Classifier was trained and tested based on three nonhistological descriptors using D2 as ground truth. Results. D2 detected statistically significant differences (P D2 at 1 hour (24 hours) was significantly lower (P D2 at 24 hours (7 days). The classifier trained on the micro-CT-derived descriptors achieves an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.95 well above the others (PFTS AUC = 0.71; cytokine AUC = 0.88). Conclusion. Micro-CT-derived descriptors are more sensitive than the other methods compared, to detect in vivo early signs of the disease.