Abstract #2326

In Vivo Visualization of Mouse Sciatic Nerves Involved with a Pancreatic Cancer Cells Using Manganese Enhanced MR Imaging Technique.

Hiroaki Mieno^1,2, Masayuki Yamaguchi³, Shuichi Mitsunaga^1,4, Akira Imoto¹, Tarou Ikumoto^1,2, Akira Hirayama^3,5, Akira Nabetani⁵, Atsushi Nozaki⁵, Taira Kinoshita², Hirohumi Fujii³, Atsushi Ochiai¹

¹Pathology Division, National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, Chiba, Japan; ²Upper Abdominal Surgery, National Cancer Center Hospital East, Kashiwa, Chiba, Japan; ³Functional Imaging Division, National Cancer Center Hospital East; ⁴Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital East; ⁵GE Yokogawa Medical Systems,Ltd., Tokyo, Japan

A novel application of manganese-enhanced MR imaging (MEMRI) has been explored to visualize mouse sciatic nerves under normal conditions and some pathological conditions, including a human pancreatic cancer xenograft invading the sciatic nerve. Sciatic nerves not involved with the tumor showed high signal intensity on MEMRI 1 day after intraspinal administration of MnCl2, where as tumor tissue retained relatively low signal intensity, allowing better discrimination between the tumor and residual nerve on MRI. MEMRI is, therefore, helpful to depict the tumor invasion front in experimental nerve invasion model of human pancreatic cancer.