13N-Ammonia PET/CT diagnosis of liver fibrosis in rats by quantitative analysis

Objectives Agre et al proposed the aquaporin theory to explain the mechanism and detailed process of water transporting through the cell membrane. Aquaporins(AQPs) concept inspired us to study the occurrence and development of diseases and the role AQPs play. To investigate the value of 13N-NH3 H20 PET/CT in quantitative diagnosis of early liver fibrosis.

Methods Take 13N-ammonia as imaging agent and acetazolamide(ACZ) as AQP inhibitor. Put 5 rats in the control groups, and other 12 rats in the model group of liver fibrosis, which includes 7 of S1, 5 of S2+S3+S4. By performing dynamic PET/CT scan to these rats and analyzing of 13N-ammonia standard uptake rate of the two groups at different time points of 20s, 90s, 5min, 10min, 15min, 20min and 25min,compared the blood perfusion, interstitial diffusion and 13N-ammonia metabolism among the control group and the model group with the method of data reconstruction and imaging analysis.

Results With ACZ as the inhibitor, the SUVs of S0 at the time point of 10min,15min,S1 at the time point of 20s and S2+S3+S4 at the time point of 10min,15min,20min,25min show obvious statistics difference. While SUVs of each group have no obvious statistics difference at each time point.

Conclusions 13N-ammonia PET/CT combining with ACZ can diagnosis early liver fibrosis and distinguish the stage.