Key result
High-frequency ultrasound PWV mapping successfully visualized regional arterial stiffness without ECG gating, measuring average PWVs of 2.0 m/s in WT mice and up to 4.1 m/s in 24-week ApoE KO mice.
Why the study?
Preclinical small-animal pulse-wave velocity measurements using high-frequency ultrasound conventionally require ECG-gated retrospective imaging, which may be affected by arrhythmia-related problems.
HFUS PWV mapping using ultrafast Doppler imaging without ECG gating can effectively visualize regional arterial stiffness and detect plaque-related PWV increases in preclinical mouse models.
Arterial pulse-wave velocity (PWV) is widely used in clinical applications to assess cardiovascular diseases. Ultrasound methods have been proposed for estimating regional PWV in human arteries. Furthermore, high-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) has been applied to perform preclinical small-animal PWV measurements; however, electrocardiogram (ECG)-gated retrospective imaging is required to achieve high-frame-rate imaging, which might be affected by arrhythmia-related problems. In this article, HFUS PWV mapping based on 40-MHz ultrafast HFUS imaging is proposed to visualize PWV on mouse carotid artery to measure arterial stiffness without ECG gating. In contrast to most other studies that used cross-correlation methods to detect arterial motion, ultrafast Doppler imaging was applied in this study to measure arterial wall velocity for PWV estimations. The performance of the proposed HFUS PWV mapping method was verified using a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) phantom with various freeze-thaw cycles. Small-animal studies were then performed in wild-type (WT) mice and in apolipoprotein E knockout (ApoE KO) mice that were fed a high-fat diet (for 16 and 24 weeks). The Young's modulus of the PVA phantom measured through HFUS PWV mapping was 15.3 ± 0.81, 20.8 ± 0.32, and 32.2 ± 1.11 kPa for three, four, and five freeze-thaw cycles, respectively, and the corresponding measurement biases (relative to theoretical values) were 1.59%, 6.41%, and 5.73%, respectively. In the mouse study, the average PWVs were 2.0 ± 0.26, 3.3 ± 0.45, and 4.1 ± 0.22 m/s for 16-week WT, 16-week ApoE KO, and 24-week ApoE KO mice, respectively. The PWVs of ApoE KO mice increased during the high-fat diet feeding period. HFUS PWV mapping was used to visualize the regional stiffness of mouse artery, and a histology confirmed that the plaque formation in the bifurcation region increased the regional PWV. All the results indicate that the proposed HFUS PWV mapping method is a convenient tool for investigating arterial properties in preclinical small-animal studies.
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Huang et al. (2023) studied Arterial stiffness. High-frequency ultrasound (HFUS) PWV mapping based on 40-MHz ultrafast Doppler imaging was evaluated on Average pulse-wave velocity (PWV). High-frequency ultrasound PWV mapping successfully visualized regional arterial stiffness without ECG gating, measuring average PWVs of 2.0 m/s in WT mice and up to 4.1 m/s in 24-week ApoE KO mice.
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