Quantification of the morphological features of a full microvascular network

Investigations into the changes that occur in microvasculature following the surgical procedure called delay have brought about the need for a computer system capable of quantifying the morphological features of a full microvascular network in terms of average vessel length, diameter, and tortuosity...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Medical & biological engineering & computing 1998-09, Vol.36 (5), p.621-626
Main Authors: BIDIWALA, S. B, MANSOUR, M. S, STENGEL, C. K, KLEIN, S. A, CARROLL, S. M, KOENIG, S. C, DESOKY, A. H, TOBIN, G. R, MALDONADO, C, BARKER, J. H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Blood vessels
Confidence intervals
Feature extraction
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods
Medical imaging
Medical sciences
Mice
Mice, Hairless
Microcirculation
Microcirculation - anatomy & histology
Models, Cardiovascular
Morphology
Muscle
Muscle, Skeletal - blood supply
Musculoskeletal system
Reliability
Studies
Surgery (general aspects). Transplantations, organ and tissue grafts. Graft diseases
UNIX
Vascular surgery: aorta, extremities, vena cava. Surgery of the lymphatic vessels
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Investigations into the changes that occur in microvasculature following the surgical procedure called delay have brought about the need for a computer system capable of quantifying the morphological features of a full microvascular network in terms of average vessel length, diameter, and tortuosity. Both the formulaic conventions that have been developed to measure these quantities as well as their implementation in the form of a HP-9000/UNIX based computer software system that we developed specifically for this purpose are discussed. Reliability studies performed using the final system to measure the microcirculatory network of a mouse latissmus dorsi muscle (LDM) showed 95% confidence intervals within 5% of means and coefficients of variability within 7% of means for all quantities measured in large (150-300 microns), medium (50-150 microns), and small (< 50 microns) diameter vessels. These variations were significantly smaller than the changes that were observed in a preliminary study comparing these microvascular network parameters before and after delay in the hairless mouse LDM, showing the proposed quantification methods to be well suited to the study of the microvascular changes following delay. It is hoped that the formulaic conventions, implementation process and reliability data will provide a useful comparison for other researchers interested in measuring similar features of microcirculatory networks.
ISSN:0140-0118
1741-0444
DOI:10.1007/bf02524434