As the most prevalent hepatic disorder worldwide, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease strongly correlates to obesity and encompasses a broad spectrum from steatosis to carcinoma. Complementary to established diagnostic modalities, photoacoustic tomography (PAT) can provide high-speed images with endogenous optical contrast. However, none of the PAT systems has investigated fatty liver non-invasively with detailed angiograms. With the newly developed noninvasive PAT (termed 3D-PAT) system, we study the livers of multiple rats in vivo. The system provides isotropically high spatial resolution in 3D space, presenting clear anatomical and dynamical details of the rat livers. Moreover, we propose several PAT image features to quantify the difference between the livers of lean and obese rats. Statistical differences between the two groups have been observed, demonstrating the capabilities of 3D-PAT to provide hematogenous information for fatty liver diagnosis. The preclinical hepatic research using 3D-PAT warrants clinical translation towards human pediatric liver imaging.
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