Multicompartmental non-invasive sensing of postprandial lipemia in humans with multispectral optoacoustic tomography.

Abstract Objective Postprandial lipid profiling (PLP), a risk indicator ofcardiometabolic disease, is based on frequent blood sampling over several hours after a meal, an approach that is invasive and inconvenient. Non-invasive PLP may offer an alternative for disseminated human monitoring. Herein, we investigate the use of clinical Multispectral Optoacoustic Tomography (MSOT) for the non-invasive, label-free PLP via direct lipid-sensing in human vasculature and soft tissues. Methods Four (n = 4) subjects (3 females and 1 male, age: 28 ± 7 years) were enrolled in the current pilot study. We longitudinally measured the lipid signals in arteries, veins, skeletal muscles and adipose tissues of all participants at 30 min-intervalsfor 6 hours after the oral consumption of a high-fat meal. Results Optoacoustic lipid-signal analysis showed on average a 63.4% intra-arterial increase at ∼4 hours postprandially, a 83.9% intra-venous increase at ∼3 hours, a 120.8% intra-muscular increase at ∼3 hours and a 32.8% subcutaneous fat increase at ∼4 hours. Conclusion MSOT provides the potential to study lipid metabolism that could lead to novel diagnostics and prevention strategies by label-free, non-invasive detection of tissue biomarkers implicated in cardiometabolic diseases.