Kavli Affiliate: Biao Huang
| First 5 Authors: Clotilde Vié, Martina Tashkova, James Burn, Matthieu Toulemonde, Jipeng Yan
| Summary:
The regulation of intestinal blood flow is critical to gastrointestinal
function. Imaging the intestinal mucosal micro-circulation in vivo has the
potential to provide new insight into the gut physiology and pathophysiology.
We aimed to determine whether ultrafast contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) and
super-resolution ultrasound localisation microscopy (SRUS/ULM) could be a
useful tool for imaging the small intestine microcirculation in vivo
non-invasively and for detecting changes in blood flow in the duodenum.
Ultrafast CEUS and SRUS/ULM were used to image the small intestinal
microcirculation in a cohort of 20 healthy volunteers (BMI<25). Participants
were imaged while conscious and either having been fasted, or following
ingestion of a liquid meal or water control, or under acute stress. For the
first time we have performed ultrafast CEUS and ULM on the human small
intestine, providing unprecedented resolution images of the intestinal
microcirculation. We evaluated flow speed inside small vessels in healthy
volunteers (2.78 +/- 0.05 mm/s, mean +/- SEM) and quantified changes in the
perfusion of this microcirculation in response to nutrient ingestion. Perfusion
of the microvasculature of the intestinal mucosa significantly increased
post-prandially (36.2% +/- 12.2%, mean +/- SEM, p<0.05). The feasibility of 3D
SRUS/ULM was also demonstrated. This study demonstrates the potential utility
of ultrafast CEUS for assessing perfusion and detecting changes in blood flow
in the duodenum. SRUS/ULM also proved a useful tool to image the microvascular
blood flow in vivo non-invasively and to evaluate blood speed inside the
microvasculature of the human small intestine.
| Search Query: ArXiv Query: search_query=au:”Biao Huang”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=3