Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a chronic and ultimately fatal pulmonary disease due to scarring of the lung tissue. While biopsies are the gold standard for diagnosis of IPF, there is definitive need for increased efforts towards identifying new molecular markers associated with the disease for efficient diagnosis. Fourier Transform Infrared imaging (FT‐IR) combines imaging at a spatial resolution that approaches light microscopy coupled with biochemical sensitivity of spectroscopy. In this study, bleomycin induced pulmonary fibrosis in rodents, a pre‐clinical model of IPF was used to detect the biochemical changes that occur during different stages of fibrosis. Based on the time point after bleomycin challenge, the animals were grouped as 1. Control; 2. Day 7 (Inflammation); 3. Day 14 (Onset of fibrosis); 4. Day 21 (fibrosis); 5. Day 28 (recovery phase). FT‐IR images were acquired from the lung tissues in each group in reflectance mode using an Agilent Cary 600 Series FT‐IR spectrometer. The spectral profile across the entire lung was obtained and pre‐processed for further analysis using multivariate data analysis. Non‐hierarchical k‐means cluster analysis of the spectrum resulted in delineation of the entire lung tissue based on the biochemical changes into different clusters that reflects the histological changes in the tissue. Further, specific changes in the biochemical composition of the fibrotic and non‐fibrotic regions in the lung during various stages of fibrosis was quantified by the changes in the spectral ratios of the biomolecules of interest. PCA‐LDA analysis could score the probability of occurrence of fibrosis based on the spectral changes. FT‐IR imaging will be a potentially powerful clinical tool, giving new insights into the biochemistry of tissue in a label‐free and non‐perturbing manner.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.
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