Background: Significant mortality and morbidity are associated with alterations in the pulmonary vasculature. While techniques have been described for quantitative morphometry of whole-lung arterial trees in larger animals, no methods have been described in mice. We report a method for the quantitative assessment of murine pulmonary arterial vasculature using high-resolution computed tomography scanning.
Methods: Mice were harvested at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, and 3 months of age. The pulmonary artery vascular tree was pressure perfused to maximal dilation with a radio-opaque casting material with viscosity and pressure set to prevent capillary transit and venous filling. The lungs were fixed and scanned on a specimen computed tomography scanner at 8-μm resolution, and the vessels were segmented. Vessels were grouped into categories based on lumen diameter and branch generation.
Results: Robust high-resolution segmentation was achieved, permitting detailed quantitation of pulmonary vascular morphometrics. As expected, postnatal lung development was associated with progressive increase in small-vessel number and arterial branching complexity.
Conclusions: These methods for quantitative analysis of the pulmonary vasculature in postnatal and adult mice provide a useful tool for the evaluation of mouse models of disease that affect the pulmonary vasculature.
Keywords: Computed tomography; Lung development; Pulmonary circulation.
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