Multifractal structure of cholinergic innervation in the tunica albuginea of rat testis. Comparison with different models simulating nerve networks

Abstract

The complexity of the distribution of cholinergic innervation of the albuginea suggests that its structural pattern may exhibit multiple scaling rules rather than a single global scale. Therefore, the study of nerve fibers could be approached through multifractal analysis. The cholinergic fiber plexuses of the rat testicular albuginea, visualized by a histochemical technique for the detection of acetylcholine sterases, will be analyzed for the possible detection of their multifractal structure, calculating several types of multifractal spectra, namely multifractal spectrum f(α) versus α, and the generalized dimension DQ versus Q. In the present study, the results will be compared with the multifractal spectra of plexus models consisting of the elaboration of interconnected line lattices generated, either employing a binary matrix or using a tessellation matrix, and according to various realizations of randomly distributed points in a two-dimensional space. The results of this study suggest that the cholinergic nerve plexuses of the testicular albuginea of the rat show a multifractal behavior, and the multifractality of the real data is greater than that of the simulated networks. However, Voronoi tessellations models show a more remarkable similarity of the multifractal scale with the real data in comparison with those generated by a binary matrix.