Characterization of the inflammatory post-ischemic tissue by full volumetric analysis of a multimodal imaging dataset.

In vivo positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) support non-invasive assessment of the spatiotemporal expression of proteins of interest and functional/structural changes. Our work promotes the use of a volumetric analysis on multimodal imaging datasets to assess the spatio-temporal dynamics and interaction of two imaging biomarkers, with a special focus on two neuroinflammation-related biomarkers, the translocator protein (TSPO) and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), in the acute and chronic post-ischemic phase. To improve our understating of the neuroinflammatory reaction and tissue heterogeneity during the post ischemic phase, we aimed (i) to assess the spatio-temporal distribution of two radiotracers, [ As described by Zinnhardt et al. (2015), a total of N = 30 C57BL/6 mice underwent [ Both imaging biomarkers showed a constant small percentage of overlap across all time points (14.0 ± 14.2%). [ This study promotes the use of an unbiased volumetric analyses of multi-modal imaging data sets to improve the characterization of pathological tissue heterogeneity. This approach improves our understanding of (i) the dynamics of disease-related multi-modal imaging biomarkers, (ii) their spatiotemporal interactions and (iii) the post-ischemic tissue heterogeneity. Our results indicate acute MMPs activation after tMCAo preceding TSPO-dependent (micro-)gliosis. The spatial distribution of MMPs and gliosis is regionally independent with only minor (< 20%) overlapping areas in peri‑infarct regions.

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Copyright © 2020. Published by Elsevier Inc.

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare no conflict of interest.