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Spatio-temporal texture (SpTeT) for distinguishing vulnerable from stable atherosclerotic plaque on dynamic contrast enhancement (DCE) MRI in a rabbit model.

ABSTRACT: To develop a new spatio-temporal texture (SpTeT) based method for distinguishing vulnerable versus stable atherosclerotic plaques on DCE-MRI using a rabbit model of atherothrombosis.Aortic atherosclerosis was induced in 20 New Zealand White rabbits by cholesterol diet and endothelial denudation. MRI was performed before (pretrigger) and after (posttrigger) inducing plaque disruption with Russell's-viper-venom and histamine. Of the 30 vascular targets (segments) under histology analysis, 16 contained thrombus (vulnerable) and 14 did not (stable). A total of 352 voxel-wise computerized SpTeT features, including 192 Gabor, 36 Kirsch, 12 Sobel, 52 Haralick, and 60 first-order textural features, were extracted on DCE-MRI to capture subtle texture changes in the plaques over the course of contrast uptake. Different combinations of SpTeT feature sets, in which the features were ranked by a minimum-redundancy-maximum-relevance feature selection technique, were evaluated via a random forest classifier. A 500 iterative 2-fold cross validation was performed for discriminating the vulnerable atherosclerotic plaque and stable atherosclerotic plaque on per voxel basis. Four quantitative metrics were utilized to measure the classification results in separating between vulnerable and stable plaques.The quantitative results show that the combination of five classes of SpTeT features can distinguish between vulnerable (disrupted plaques with an overlying thrombus) and stable plaques with the best AUC values of 0.9631 ± 0.0088, accuracy of 89.98% ± 0.57%, sensitivity of 83.71% ± 1.71%, and specificity of 94.55% ± 0.48%.Vulnerable and stable plaque can be distinguished by SpTeT based features. The SpTeT features, following validation on larger datasets, could be established as effective and reliable imaging biomarkers for noninvasively assessing atherosclerotic risk.

SUBMITTER: Wan T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3987744 | biostudies-other | 2014 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:Background and objectivesFormation and progression of atherosclerotic vulnerable plaque (VP) is the primary cause of many cardio-cerebrovascular diseases such as acute coronary syndrome and stroke. It has been reported that bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) exhibit protective effects against many kinds of diseases including myocardial infarction. Here, we examined the effects of intravenous MSC infusion on a VP model and provide novel evidence of its influence as a therapy in this animal disease model.Subjects and methodsThirty healthy male New Zealand white rabbits were randomly divided into a MSC, VP or stable plaque (SP) group (n = 10/group) and received high fat diet and cold-induced common carotid artery intimal injury with liquid nitrogen to form atherosclerotic plaques. Serum hs-CRP, TNF-?, IL-6 and IL-10 levels were measured by ELISA at 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days after MSC transplantation. The animals were sacrificed at 4 weeks after MSC transplantation. Lesions in the right common carotid were observed using H&E and Masson staining, and the fibrous cap/lipid core ratio of atherosclerotic plaques were calculated. The expression of nuclear factor ?B (NF-?B) and matrix metalloproteinase 1, 2, 9 (MMP-1,2,9) in the plaque were detected using immunohistochemistry, and apoptotic cells in the plaques were detected by TUNEL. In addition, the level of TNF-? stimulated gene/protein 6 (TSG-6) mRNA and protein were measured by quantitative Real-Time PCR and Western blotting, respectively.ResultsTwo rabbits in the VP group died of lung infection and cerebral infarction respectively at 1 week after plaque injury by liquid nitrogen. Both H&E and Masson staining revealed that the plaques from the SP and MSC groups had more stable morphological structure and a larger fibrous cap/lipid core ratio than the VP group. Serum hs-CRP, TNF-? and IL-6 were significantly down-regulated, whereas IL-10 was significantly up-regulated in the MSC group compared with the VP group. .Immunohistochemistry analysis revealed that NF-?B and MMP expression was reduced in the MSC and SP groups compared to the VP group. Cell apoptosis decreased significantly in both the MSC and SP groups in comparison to the VP group. TSG-6 mRNA and protein expression were higher in the plaques of the MSC group compared to the VP and SP groups.ConclusionsOur study results suggest that MSC transplantation can effectively stabilize vulnerable plaques in atherosclerotic rabbits. This may potentially offer a new clinical application of MSC in atherosclerosis.

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Spatio-temporal texture (SpTeT) for distinguishing vulnerable from stable atherosclerotic plaque on dynamic contrast enhancement (DCE) MRI in a rabbit model.

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