In vivo ventilation/perfusion (V/Q) imaging can detect early changes to the lung caused by cigarette smoke exposure and provides a noninvasive method for studying lung dysfunction in preclinical models, according to research published in the April issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. These measures have the potential to be applied clinically to study and diagnose the early stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
“Better diagnostic tools are needed to detect early changes in smokers to prevent further lung dysfunction and provide patients with individualized treatment regimens,” said N. Renee Labiris, PhD, one of the authors of the study, “Detection of Lung Dysfunction Using Ventilation and Perfusion SPECT in a Mouse Model of Chronic Cigarette Smoke Exposure.” “Our preclinical study suggests that not only can V/Q imaging detect early and small changes in lung pathology, the type of V/Q mismatching could provide insight into the underlying pathologies, which current measures of lung function are unable to do.”
