Measuring Vascular Permeability In Vivo.

Over the past decades, in vivo vascular permeability measurements have provided significant insight into vascular functions in physiological and pathophysiological conditions such as the response to pro- and anti-angiogenic signaling, abnormality of tumor vasculature and its normalization, and delivery and efficacy of therapeutic agents. Different approaches for vascular permeability measurements have been established. Here, we describe and discuss a conventional 2D imaging method to measure vascular permeability, which was originally documented by Gerlowski and Jain in 1986 (Microvasc Res 31:288-305, 1986) and further developed by Yuan et al. in the early 1990s (Microvasc Res 45:269-289, 1993; Cancer Res 54:352-3356, 1994), and our recently developed 3D imaging method, which advances the approach originally described by Brown et al. in 2001 (Nat Med 7:864-868, 2001).