Quantification of bleomycin-induced murine lung damage in vivo with micro-computed tomography

We explored noninvasive, in vivo cone-beam microcomputed tomography (micro-CT) to visualize and quantify fibrotic and inflammatory damage over the entire lung volume of mice.

We used bleomycin to induce pulmonary damage in vivo and compared the results from micro-CT with histologic measurements. Ten C57BL/6 mice were given 5 U/kg bleomycin intratracheally. Seven surviving mice were scanned with micro-CT before administration of bleomycin, and again before sacrifice. The resulting images were analyzed for lung volume measurements. After the final scan, all lungs were examined histologically and pulmonary damage was quantified. Damaged lung tissue regions were matched between micro-CT images and histologic sections for each mouse.

The percent lung damage calculated from micro-CT and histology were correlated (r(2) = 0.49, r = 0.64 with P = 0.12), and the means of their respective distributions were not different (P > 0.05).

This study shows that micro-CT is a promising alternative to predicting lung damage caused by bleomycin. CT image volumes of the thorax allow for global tissue sampling, which may be useful when following nonuniform lung damage that can occur from intratracheal administration of bleomycin.