Reconstruction and Analysis of Ocular Vascular Network
3D vascular network reconsturction
The vessels of a normal monkey optic nerve head were labeled by fluorescence dye perfusion through the monkey's arteries. The eye was sectioned and imaged using fluorescence microscopy (FM) and instant polarized light microscopy (IPOL). The IPOL images were registered and used to form a stack of FM images from which the vessels were segmented and skeletonized to reconstruct the 3D vascular network. In this case, the entire vascular network consisted of 12,966 vascular segments, 7,989 branching points, and 1,100 terminal points at the network boundaries.
3D vascular network analysis
Analysis of the vessels reveals information is essential to understand ocular hemodynamics and its potential role in physiology, pathology, and vision loss. For example, tortuosity followed an exponential distribution. Most vessels in the network were fairly straight, but tortuous vessels also existed. Tortuous vessels possess certain advantages, such as enhancing the efficiency of oxygen and nutrition delivery and safeguarding against excessive distortion-induced damage.