Quantitative analysis of 3D vasculature for evaluation of angiogenesis in liver fibrosis with SR-μCT

The micro-CT imaging of vasculature is a powerful tool for evaluation of angiogenesis, a prominent characteristic of hepatic fibrosis. The segment or bifurcation density, which is usually adopted to evaluate the degree of hepatic fibrosis, does not always work and may lead to incorrect assessment, especially when the three-dimensional vasculature obtained is imperfect in sample preparation or image collection. In this paper, we propose a new parameter to solve this problem. The experimental results demonstrate that the method is robust and reliable, and is practical for angiogenesis evaluation, despite of image data imperfections. This quantitative analysis method can be extended to investigate other kinds of diseases in which vasculature change is a key indicator.