Jana Mrzilkova (1,2), Petr Michenka (1,2), Martin Šeremeta (1,2), Jaromir Kremen (1), Jan Dudák (3,4), Jan Žemlička (3), Vladimir Musil (5), Bernd Minnich (6), Petr Zach (1,2)
BioMed Research International, February 2020. DOI: 10.1155/2020/7502578

Abstract

We performed micro-CT imaging of the vascular blood supply in the interscapular area of the brown adipose tissue in three mice with the use of intravascular contrast agent Aurovist™. Resulting 3D data rendering was then adapted into 2D resolution with visualization using false color system and grayscale images. These were then studied for the automatic quantification of the blood vessel density within this area. We found the highest most occurring density within arterioles or venules representing smaller blood vessels whereas with the increase of the vessel diameters a lower percentage rate of their presence was observed in the sample. Our study shows that micro-CT scanning in combination with Aurovist™ contrast is suitable for anatomical studies of interscapular area of brown adipose tissue blood vessel supply.

How Our Software Was Used

Dragonfly was used to delineate interscapular brown adipose tissue (I-BAT), for the post processing and in-depth visualization of I-BAT grayscale images, to generate and visualize CT-scans images and to perform 3D analysis.

Author Affiliation

(1) Specialized Laboratory of Experimental Imaging of the Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics and Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic.
(2) Department of Anatomy, Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
(3) Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic.
(4) Faculty of Biomedical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Kladno, Czech Republic.
(5) Centre of Scientific Information, Third Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
(6) Department of Biosciences, Vascular & Exercise Biology Unit, University of Salzburg, Austria.