Abstract
PurposeTo develop a digital image processing method to quantify structural components (smooth muscle fibers and extracellular matrix) in the vessel wall stained with Masson’s trichrome, and a statistical method suitable for small sample sizes to analyze the results previously obtained.MethodsThe quantification method comprises two stages. The pre-processing stage improves tissue image appearance and the vessel wall area is delimited. In the feature extraction stage, the vessel wall components are segmented by grouping pixels with a similar color. The area of each component is calculated by normalizing the number of pixels of each group by the vessel wall area. Statistical analyses are implemented by permutation tests, based on resampling without replacement from the set of the observed data to obtain a sampling distribution of an estimator. The implementation can be parallelized on a multicore machine to reduce execution time.ResultsThe methods have been tested on 48 vessel wall samples of the internal saphenous vein stained with Masson’s trichrome. The results show that the segmented areas are consistent with the perception of a team of doctors and demonstrate good correlation between the expert judgments and the measured parameters for evaluating vessel wall changes.ConclusionThe proposed methodology offers a powerful tool to quantify some components of the vessel wall. It is more objective, sensitive and accurate than the biochemical and qualitative methods traditionally used. The permutation tests are suitable statistical techniques to analyze the numerical measurements obtained when the underlying assumptions of the other statistical techniques are not met.
Highlights
The conditions of blood flow in the arterial and venous systems determine some of its structural features
The results show that the segmented areas are consistent with the perception of a team of doctors and demonstrate good correlation between the expert judgments and the measured parameters for evaluating vessel wall changes
The main contribution of this work is to develop a methodology for segmenting and quantifying some vessel wall components by processing and analysis of digital image
Summary
The conditions of blood flow in the arterial and venous systems determine some of its structural features. Venous system disturbances are typically much less hazardous but, on the contrary, occur frequently in some cases. Such is the case of venous insufficiency, often manifest as lower limb varicose veins, one of the most common disorders in Western countries and the most common peripheral blood vessel complaint. Varicose veins affect up to 40% in men and 32% in women [1,2], since early clinical stages may cause deterioration in patients’ quality of life [3]
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have