A preclinical multi-modal system for dynamic noninvasive assessment of liver disease

Abstract Chronic liver diseaseCLDaffects millions of people in America every yearand annually kills tens of thousands of these patientsDespite very active research effortsthere still have been no specific antifibrotic drugs approved by the FDAThe liver disease and drug development communities do not currently have wellvalidatedlow costeasy to usenoninvasive tools for studying the progression of liver fibrosissteatosisand inflammation in preclinical rodent models making it challenging to execute high quality longitudinal studiesTo address this needSonoVol Incproposes to develop a novel multi modal benchtop imaging system capable of providing rapidnoninvasive measurements of liver disease in rodentsThe platform will utilize four core imaging technologiesquantitative ultrasoundQUSshear wave elasticity imagingSWEIacoustic angiographyAAand targeted molecular imagingMIWhile some preclinical products implement the abovementioned technologiesall of them follow the conventional ultrasound paradigm of data collectiona trained sonographer uses a handheld probe and manually selects regions of interest to interrogateMaking consistent and accurate measurements requires in depth knowledge of probe placement and sonographic techniquewhich academic biologists or drug researchers are unlikely to possessThereforeSonoVol will develop a device capable of fully automatednon contact imaging that eliminates the need for a trained sonographer and will enable large scale adoption of these powerful technologies in the preclinical liver diseases research communityTo validate the new systemtwo different animal models for hepatic injury will be evaluatedand the results compared to conventional postmortem assessments of liver diseaseThis technology represents an innovative combination of a widefieldD robotic ultrasound imaging system and noninvasive SWEIQUSand contrast enhanced imagingFurthermorethe technology can be applied in the future to many other diseasesincluding cancer or cardiac modelsincreasing the potential market and impact on the field Project Narrative There are many methods currently used by researchers to collect images of preclinical rodent anatomy and internal organ functionHoweverthese technologies are rarely used by the liver disease research and drug development communities due to their cost or technical complexityWe are proposing to build the first automated low cost benchtop noninvasive liver disease measurement tool to be used in rodent researchIn the futureour benchtop imaging product will help reduce the financial burden and increase the pace of preclinical liver disease and drug studies by leveraging lower cost hardware and an automated approach to analyzing tissue injury