Section: New Results

Quantitative comparison of micro-vasculatures

Participants : Manon Linder, Grégoire Malandain.

This work is made in collaboration with Cécile Duplaa and Thierry Couffinhal (INSERM).

Angiogenesis is a key component of ontogenesis, but also of tumor development or in some pathology repair (i.e. ischemia). Deciphering the underlying mechanisms of vessel formation is of importance. We aimed at identifying and characterizing the genetic components that are involved in this development. This requires to compare the effect of each gene with respect to the others, hence appeals for quantitative comparisons. We developed a methodology that first transforms a vascular image into a tree and second quantitatively analyze 3D vascular trees (see Figure 9 ) We conduct real experiments with images of the renal arterial network of different mutant mice, through the development of quantitative measurements that allow for group study.

Figure 9. From left to right: two mip views of mouse kidneys acquired with a micro-CT (control and Fzd4 & Fzd6 KO mouse); a labeled tree built from an image; Diameter-defined Strahler classification of arterial trees.