Flouri, Dimitra;
Darby, Jack RT;
Holman, Stacey L;
Williams, Georgia;
Vavourakis, Vasileios;
David, Anna L;
Morrison, Janna L;
(2025)
Feasibility of multimodal magnetic resonance imaging to assess maternal hyperoxygenation in sheep pregnancy.
The Journal of Physiology
, 603
(5)
pp. 1029-1044.
10.1113/JP287272.
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Abstract
An adequate supply of oxygen is crucial for optimal fetal growth and development. Estimation of quantitative indices that reflect tissue diffusivity and oxygenation have been enabled by advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. However, the current diagnostic tools in clinical obstetrics, such as Doppler ultrasound measurements of umbilical blood flow and cardiotocography, do not offer direct information about the oxygen supply to the fetus, nor placental function in vivo. Although MRI provides an opportunity to identify critical changes in fetal oxygenation, exact tissue oxygen content cannot be established in humans. Preclinical models such as pregnant sheep allow the use of invasive methods to validate MRI measurements. The present study investigates the relationship between changes in MRI signal and conventional blood gas analyser measurements during normoxic and hyperoxic conditions in pregnant sheep. Several studies have reported an increase in human fetal oxygenation during 100% maternal oxygen inhalation. We investigated the physiological impact of maternal hyperoxygenation on the placenta in normal pregnant sheep using multimodal functional MRI. Using a multicompartment MRI signal model, we observed the expected increase in feto-placental oxygen saturation with maternal hyperoxygenation. In addition, maternal hyperoxygenation resulted in a significant increase in blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal intensities, suggesting that BOLD MRI allows non-invasive assessment of the feto-placental response to maternal hyperoxygenation in sheep. Our data suggest that diffusion and relaxation-based MRI is sensitive to acute changes in maternal and feto-placental oxygenation and demonstrate a link between MRI-parameter estimated and reference oxygen saturation.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Feasibility of multimodal magnetic resonance imaging to assess maternal hyperoxygenation in sheep pregnancy |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1113/JP287272 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1113/jp287272 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). The Journal of Physiology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Physiological Society. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | DECIDE; maternal hyperoxia; magnetic resonance imaging; oxygen; placenta; sheep |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL EGA Institute for Womens Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Med Phys and Biomedical Eng UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL EGA Institute for Womens Health > Maternal and Fetal Medicine |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10207546 |
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