Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Pulmonary Arterial Remodeling Revealed By Microfocal X-Ray Tomography, Kelly L. Karau, Robert C. Molthen, Anita H. Dhyani, Steven Thomas Haworth, Christopher A. Dawson

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Animal models and micro-CT imaging are useful for understanding the functional consequences of, and identifying the genes involved in, the remodeling of vascular structures that accompanies pulmonary vascular disease. Using a micro-CT scanner to image contrast-enhanced arteries in excised lungs from fawn hooded rats (a strain genetically susceptible to hypoxia induced pulmonary hypertension), we found that portions of the pulmonary arterial tree downstream from a given diameter were morphometrically indistinguishable. This 'self-consistency' property provided a means for summarizing the pulmonary arterial tree architecture and mechanical properties using a parameter vector obtained from measurements of the contiguous set of vessel segments …