Different Methods To Evaluate The Soft Tissue Injury In Rats: A Comparative Study

Background and objective: Soft tissue injury, including chronic strain and sportsinjuries, is common in clinical. With the popularity of office automation, the softtissue injury, especially skeletal muscle injury is increasing year by year. In thepast, we evaluate this disease by sings and symptoms, poor objectivity. In recentyears，ultrasonic, microcirculation blood perfusion, infrared thermal imagingmethods are used to evaluate soft tissue injury. There are some progresses, butthese methods are still to be further study, their relationships were worth furtherdiscussed. This study was to establish gastrocnemius blunt force trauma model inrats, then respectively using infrared thermal imaging examination, ultrasoundexamination, laser Doppler blood perfusion inspection, pathological HE dyeingand basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) to evaluate，then comparative with thenormal group. These four methods were observed the sensitivity to the model,compared the relationship between these methods.Methods: Forty male Wistar rats were randomly divided into normal control group(n=10) and soft tissue injury group(n=30). Using self-made equipment,established the rats gastrocnemius blunt force trauma, normal breeding, formingsoft tissue injury animal model. Day1，10rats were randomly taken from softtissue injury group and10normal rats, for infrared thermal imaging, ultrasound,laser Doppler blood perfusion, finally put to death the rats, take on thegastrocnemius for pathological HE dyeing and bFGF.7day and21days latertaken10rats respectively to evaluate by the four methods.Results:（1）There are different among the soft tissue injury group and normalgroup in the1day,7days and21days in the ultrasound examination results, laserDoppler blood perfusion examination results, pathology HE dyeing and bFGF test results.（2）Infrared thermal imaging examination diden’t found the differentbetween the soft tissue injury group and the normal group, except the first day.（3）Ultrasound examination and pathological result show the same organization,changes in blood flow. Ultrasound examination and laser-Doppler perfusionimaging results have difference, is mainly because the two methods respectivelyresponse different depth and different areas of the changes in blood flow.Conclusions:(1) The ultrasound, laser Doppler blood perfusion inspection,pathological HE dyeing and bFGF methods are sensitive to the soft tissue injurymodel, we can use the three methods do more research for the soft tissue injurymodel.(2) The research suggests infrared thermal imaging examination should notbe used to observe the soft tissue injury in rats.(3) Infrared thermal imaging,ultrasound examination, laser Doppler blood perfusion inspection and pathologicexamination has its advantages and disadvantages. Ultrasound show moreinformation.