Three-dimensional characteristics of alveolar macrophages in vitro observed by dark field microscopy

Abstract

Alveolar macrophages (AM) are cells from immune defense inside the lung. They engulf particles in vacuoles from the outer membrane. Volume and surface are important parameters to characterize the particle uptake. AM change their shape within a few seconds, therefore it is hard to obtain by confocal laser scanning microscopy, which is commonly used to generate 3D-images. So we used an intensified dark field microscopy (DFM) as an alternative method to generate contrast rich AM gray tone image slices used for 3D-reconstructions of AM cells by VTK software applications. From these 3D-reconstructions approximate volume and surface data of the AM were obtained and compared to values found in the literature. Finally, simple geometrical 3D-models of the AM were created and compared to real data. Averaged volume and surface data from the DFM images are close to values found in the literature. Furthermore, calculation of volume and surface data from DFM images could be done faster if simplified geometrical 3D-models of the cells were used.