Hiroaki Mieno1,2, Masayuki Yamaguchi3, Shuichi Mitsunaga1,4, Akira Imoto1, Tarou Ikumoto1,2, Akira Hirayama3,5, 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.