Yijen Lin Wu1, Qing Ye1, Brent D
Barbe1, Fang-Cheng Yeh1,2, Lesley M Foley1,
Li Liu1, T. Kevin Hitchens1, Chien Ho1,3
1Pittsburgh NMR Center for
Biomedical Research, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United
States; 2Department of Biomedical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States; 3Department of
Biological Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United
States
The aim of this study is to establish integrated cellular and functional MRI parameters for various stages of acute and chronic rejection, in searching for possible non-invasive surrogate indicators with MRI that could potentially translate to clinical arena. Our data indicated that the allograft rejection, both acute and chronic forms, appears to be highly heterogeneous. Regions with compromised functions also show more macrophage infiltration. Multiple MRI parameters provide further accuracy in rejection evaluation. Detailed profiling and modeling of the temporal and spatial relationship of the integrated multi-parameter MRI may be useful in establishing surrogate markers for detecting rejection.