Date of Award

Fall 2006

Document Type

Thesis - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Biomedical Engineering

First Advisor

Molthen, Robert

Second Advisor

Krenz, Gary

Third Advisor

Clough, Anne

Abstract

This thesis designs an automated algorithm for the morphometric analysis of the rat lung vascular structure. The primary objective of our group is to develop a structural and functional understanding of pulmonary vascular remodeling (PVR). PVR can be defined as certain structural as well as biomechanical changes in the normal architecture of the walls of pulmonary vessels, which causes an increase in the pulmonary vascular resistance. The increased resistance causes an increase in the intravascular pressure, which then perpetuates the remodeling. Thus, PVR induces a vicious cycle, which leads to cor pulmonale and death. In order to design therapies, there has be a clear understanding of the development of PVR. For this purpose, our lab is studying the pulmonary arterial structure in the rat using micro-CT images obtained at various intravascular pressures. Currently, the morphometric analysis is performed using a combination of manual and semi-automated methods that require hours of constant user interaction for each rat studied. The automated algorithm provides many advantages, such as improved speed and repeatability and significantly reduced user interaction. Chapter I provides an introduction by describing motivation behind the work and specifies the thesis objectives. Chapter 2 reviews literature from previous studies that have addressed similar issues. Chapter 3 provides a detailed explanation of the currently used method for morphometric analysis. This chapter also explains the functionality of the commercially available Analyze® software package for the purpose of analyzing the pulmonary vascular structure. Chapter 4 describes the algorithms designed to automate the morphometric analysis using the AVW library of functions for biomedical images along with the C, Tel and Tk programming languages. Chapter 5 presents work done for the validation of the algorithm by comparing the algorithm results to data obtained with the manual quantification technique. Chapter 6 documents a discussion based on the validation and presents future considerations for the algorithm. Appendix A describes the animal preparation and also provides a description of the image acquisition procedure. Appendix B describes the micro-CT scanner that has been utilized to obtain the volumetric images.

Download

Share

COinS

Restricted Access Item

Having trouble?