Abstract
Atherosclerotic arteries exhibit characteristic constrictions and substantial deviations from cylindrical shape. Therefore, determining the artery’s cross-section along the centerline is challenging, although high-resolution isotropic three-dimensional data are available. Herein, we apply high-resolution computed tomography in absorption and phase to a plaque-containing human artery post-mortem, through the course of the preparation stages for histology. We identify the impact of paraffin embedding and decalcification on the artery lumen. For automatic extraction of lumen’s cross-section along centerline we present a dedicated pipeline. Comparing fixated tissue before and after paraffin embedding gives rise to shape changes with lumen reduction to 50–80%. The histological slicing induces further deformations with respect to tomography. Data acquired after decalcification show debris unintentionally distributed within the vessel preventing the reliable automatic lumen segmentation. Comparing tomography of laboratory- and synchrotron-radiation-based X rays by means of joint histogram analysis leads us to conclude that advanced desktop tomography is capable of quantifying the artery’s lumen as an essential input for blood flow simulations. The results indicate that the most reliable lumen quantification is achieved by imaging the non-decalcified specimen fixed in formalin, using phase contrast modality and a dedicated processing pipeline. This study focusses on a methodology to quantitatively evaluate diseased artery segments post-mortem and provides unique structural parameters on the treatment-induced local shrinkage, which will be the basis of future studies on the flow in vessels affected by constrictions.
Highlights
Blood vessels are commonly represented as a network of hollow tubes that transport blood through the human body
Atherosclerosis, which belongs to serious disorders of the cardiovascular system, is a chronic disease caused by the build-up of white blood cells within the vascular wall leading to plaque formation[3]
Www.nature.com/scientificreports evaluation of blood vessel anatomy[7], and they do not reach the micrometer precision required for meaningful flow simulations[8]
Summary
Blood vessels are commonly represented as a network of hollow tubes that transport blood through the human body. In vivo imaging techniques such as coronary computed tomography angiography and magnetic resonance imaging are used widely for the visualization and quantification of coronary artery occlusions. These techniques yield information under physiological conditions, they are limited in terms of the three-dimensional www.nature.com/scientificreports/. Researchers have applied expensive and time-consuming serial sectioning and the combination of two-dimensional micrographs[9] This histological approach, relies on extended tissue preparation procedures, namely fixation, decalcification, embedding, and staining, which substantially modify the geometry of the vessel with respect to the in vivo situation. Several research teams have recently applied μCT for rendering diseased coronary arteries[12,13,14,15]
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