In vivo assessment of fibrosis in murine liver using transient microelastography: a feasibility study

Recently, transient elastography has been successfully applied to assess fibrosis in the liver of human patients with chronic viral hepatitis C. In small animal experimentation, investigations on antifibrogenic substances often involve large cohorts of animals and require massive euthanasia for lack of non-invasive technique for monitoring the progression of the pathology. In this study, the potential of transient microelastography (TME) as a non-invasive technique to assess fibrosis stage in murine liver in vivo was investigated on a murine model of experimental fibrosis. The results of elastographic measurements show that the Young's modulus is higher for experimental fibrosis mice (E = 18.2 ± 3.7 kPa) than for untreated mice (E = 6.8 ± 2.2 kPa) and control mice (E = 3.6 ± 1.2 kPa). A Spearman correlation performed between the picrosirius red staining extent and the Young's modulus gives a Spearman's coefficient equal to 0.88 (P-value < 0.01). TME could be a valuable non-invasive tool to assess the evolution and the treatment response of fibrosis in murine models in vivo without proceeding to euthanasia.