In vivo assessment of diet-induced rat hepatic steatosis development by percutaneous single-fiber spectroscopy detects scattering spectral changes due to fatty infiltration.

This study explores percutaneous single-fiber spectroscopy (SfS) of rat livers undergoing fatty infiltration. Eight test rats were fed a methionine-choline-deficient (MCD) diet, and four control rats were fed a normal diet. Two test rats and one control rat were euthanized on days 12, 28, 49, and 77 following initiation of the diet, after percutaneous SfS of the liver under transabdominal ultrasound guidance. Histology of each set of the two euthanized test rats showed mild and mild hepatic lipid accumulations on day 12, moderate and severe on day 28, severe and mild on day 49, and moderate and mild on day 77. Livers with moderate or higher lipid accumulation generally presented higher spectral reflectance intensity when compared to lean livers. Livers of the eight test rats on day 12, two of which had mild lipid accumulation, revealed an average scattering power of 0.37±0.14 in comparison to 0.07±0.14 for the four control rats (p<0.01 ). When livers of the test rats with various levels of fatty infiltration were combined, the average scattering power was 0.36±0.15 0.36±0.15 in comparison to 0.14±0.24 of the control rats (0.05<p<0.1). Increasing lipid accumulation in concentration and size seemed to cause an increase of the scattering power prior to increasing total spectral reflectance.