Establishing and diagnosis of lymph node micrometastasis with subcutaneous or intravenous injection of 18F-FDG by PET/CT imaging in mouse breast cancer
To investigate the difference in the identification of lymph node micrometastasis be
tween regional subcutaneous injection and intravascular injection of
18
F-fluorodeoxyglucose (
18
F-FDG) by PET/ CT imaging in mouse breast cancer.
Methods:
The mouse 4T1 breast cancer lymph node micrometastasis model was established. The regional subcutaneous and intravascular injection of 18F-FDG was performed for PET/CT imagingin two day
respectively. For the higher
18
F-FDG uptake in lymph node of mice
SPECT/CT imaging was also performed by subcutaneous injection of technetium sulfur colloi (
99m
Tc-SC). H-E staining and immunohistochemistry of epithelial cytokeratin 5/6 (CK5/6) and glucose transporter 1 (Glut-1) were measured.
Results:
The uptake value (ID%/g) of
18
F-FDG in lymph nodes was 19.22.0 (
n
=2) by subcutaneous injection in micrometastasis group
which was significantly higher than the contralateral ones (ID%/g of 6.80.4) and those without micrometastasis (ID%/g of 7.20.4) (
P
0.000 1). No increased uptake of
18
F-FDG was observed in any mouse lymph node (ID%/ g of 2.50.5) (
P
=0.870) by intravascular injection. Moreover
SPECT/CT imaging with 99mTc-SC revealed multiple axillary lymph nodes
one of which had a well-matched lymph node with high
18
F-FDG uptake. H-E staining and immunohistochemistry of CK5/6 confirmed that high
18
F-FDG uptake in lymph nodes revealed micrometastatic.
Conclusion:
Regional subcutaneous injection of
18
F-FDG can qualitatively identify micrometastatic sentinel lymph nodes earlier than intravenous injection