Fatty acid characteristics of high-fat diet-induced tumor tissue in the liver of mice

Recent studies have highlighted the potential involvement of hepatic lipid characteristics in the development of liver cancer. Using a non‑invasive approach that integrates near‑infrared hyperspectral imaging (HSI) with machine learning, we previously established a method to visualize total lipid concentration, saturation level, and hydrocarbon chain length of fatty acids within a three‑dimensional feature space in mouse liver tissue. In the present study, to further elucidate the mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis, we expanded our dataset by adding eight additional tumor‑bearing mouse samples and separately analyzed cancerous and non‑cancerous regions within each hepatic lobe. Both gas chromatography and HSI consistently demonstrated that cancerous tissues exhibited elevated total lipid concentrations and were characterized by a notably higher abundance of oleic acid.