Three-dimensional quantification of capillary networks in healthy and cancerous tissues of two mice

• Published in: Microvascular research Vol. 84; no. 3; pp. 314 - 322
• Main Authors: Lang, Sabrina, Müller, Bert, Dominietto, Marco D., Cattin, Philippe C., Zanette, Irene, Weitkamp, Timm, Hieber, Simone E.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Elsevier Inc 01.11.2012
• Subjects: Absorption; Animals; Capillaries - pathology; Cell Line, Tumor; Fractals; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Imaging, Three-Dimensional; Mice; Mice, Inbred BALB C; Mice, Nude; Microcirculation; Microscopy, Phase-Contrast - methods; Neoplasm Transplantation; Neoplasms - pathology; Photons; X-Ray Microtomography - methods
• ISSN: 0026-2862; 1095-9319
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mvr.2012.07.002

A key issue in developing strategies against diseases such as cancer is the analysis of the vessel tree in comparison to the healthy one. In the search for parameters that might be characteristic for tumor capillaries we study the vascularization in mice for cancerous and healthy tissues using synchrotron radiation-based micro computed tomography in absorption and phase contrast modes. Our investigations are based on absorption tomograms of casted healthy and cancerous tissues as well as a phase tomogram of a fixated tumor. We demonstrate how the voxel-based tomography data can be vectorized to assess the capillary networks quantitatively. The processing includes segmentation, skeletonization, and vectorization to finally extract the vessel parameters. The mean diameter of capillaries in healthy and cancerous tissues corresponds to (8.0±1.1) μm and (3.9±1.1) μm, respectively. Further evaluated parameters show marginal or no differences between capillaries in healthy and cancerous tissues, namely fractal dimension 2.3±0.3 vs. 2.3±0.2, tortuosity (SOAM) 0.18rad/μm vs. 0.24rad/μm and vessel length 20μm vs. 17μm. The bifurcation angles exhibit a narrow distribution around 115°. Furthermore, we show that phase tomography is a powerful alternative to absorption tomography of casts for the vessel visualization omitting any invasive specimen preparation procedure. [Display omitted] ► Capillary networks in mice were assessed using tomography data quantitatively. ► The processing includes segmentation, skeletonization, and vectorization of tomograms. ► The mean diameter of capillaries in healthy tissue is twice as large as in cancerous tissue. ► SRμCT in phase contrast mode is appropriate for the tumor vessel visualization.