Eugene Kim1,
Jiangyang Zhang2, Karen Hong3, Arvind P. Pathak2,4
1Department of
Biomedical Engineering, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
Baltimore, MD, USA; 2Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology
& Radiological Science, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; 3The
Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health; 4JHU ICMIC
Program
The development of pre-clinical brain tumor models and anti-angiogenic therapies has created a critical need to characterize the brain tumor microenvironment. Here we describe a novel method for whole-brain 3D mapping of the vasculature of a mouse brain tumor model using magnetic resonance microscopy (μMRI). The vascular architecture was characterized by six morphological parameters. Region-of-interest analysis showed significant differences in these parameters between tumor and contralateral brain. In combination with diffusion-weighted MRI, we could characterize the phenotypes of post-inoculation day-12 and day-17 tumors. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using μMRI to characterize microenvironmental changes that accompany brain tumor progression.