BACKGROUND: Pharmacologic control of angiogenesis is a promising new approach to the treatment of a variety of pathologic conditions including cancer. The recently developed in vitro rat aortic ring model provides a simple, reproducible assay for discovering angiogenic agonists and antagonists. However, quantification of results in this assay is time consuming, tedious, and subjective, because it involves visual inspection of images and manually counting the newly formed microvessels extending from the cultured aortic ring. This report describes an automated image analysis-based procedure for quantification of this assay that overcomes these difficulties. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: The designed image processing algorithm segments the vessels from gray scale images. A high-pass filter is used, and the results are separated into nonvascular and vessel compartments based on object size and shape. Quantification relies on identification of vessels intersecting a closed transect set a fixed distance from the aortic ring. The number and the total area of these vessels are determined. The entire operation has been automated and packaged in an application called Vessels. RESULTS: The correlation between computer-determined vessel area/vessel number and visual microvessel count is high (r2 = 0.91 and r2 = 0.86, respectively). CONCLUSION: Vessels offers high-speed, fully automatic batch processing including production of a hard copy for documentation. The application runs on the Apple family of computers. On a Quadra 800, the application can process approximately 30 images/hour, which is approximately 2.5 times faster than manual quantification of this assay.
BACKGROUND: Pharmacologic control of angiogenesis is a promising new approach to the treatment of a variety of pathologic conditions including cancer. The recently developed in vitro rat aortic ring model provides a simple, reproducible assay for discovering angiogenic agonists and antagonists. However, quantification of results in this assay is time consuming, tedious, and subjective, because it involves visual inspection of images and manually counting the newly formed microvessels extending from the cultured aortic ring. This report describes an automated image analysis-based procedure for quantification of this assay that overcomes these difficulties. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: The designed image processing algorithm segments the vessels from gray scale images. A high-pass filter is used, and the results are separated into nonvascular and vessel compartments based on object size and shape. Quantification relies on identification of vessels intersecting a closed transect set a fixed distance from the aortic ring. The number and the total area of these vessels are determined. The entire operation has been automated and packaged in an application called Vessels. RESULTS: The correlation between computer-determined vessel area/vessel number and visual microvessel count is high (r2 = 0.91 and r2 = 0.86, respectively). CONCLUSION: Vessels offers high-speed, fully automatic batch processing including production of a hard copy for documentation. The application runs on the Apple family of computers. On a Quadra 800, the application can process approximately 30 images/hour, which is approximately 2.5 times faster than manual quantification of this assay.
Authors: Patrycja Nowak-Sliwinska; Kari Alitalo; Elizabeth Allen; Andrey Anisimov; Alfred C Aplin; Robert Auerbach; Hellmut G Augustin; David O Bates; Judy R van Beijnum; R Hugh F Bender; Gabriele Bergers; Andreas Bikfalvi; Joyce Bischoff; Barbara C Böck; Peter C Brooks; Federico Bussolino; Bertan Cakir; Peter Carmeliet; Daniel Castranova; Anca M Cimpean; Ondine Cleaver; George Coukos; George E Davis; Michele De Palma; Anna Dimberg; Ruud P M Dings; Valentin Djonov; Andrew C Dudley; Neil P Dufton; Sarah-Maria Fendt; Napoleone Ferrara; Marcus Fruttiger; Dai Fukumura; Bart Ghesquière; Yan Gong; Robert J Griffin; Adrian L Harris; Christopher C W Hughes; Nan W Hultgren; M Luisa Iruela-Arispe; Melita Irving; Rakesh K Jain; Raghu Kalluri; Joanna Kalucka; Robert S Kerbel; Jan Kitajewski; Ingeborg Klaassen; Hynda K Kleinmann; Pieter Koolwijk; Elisabeth Kuczynski; Brenda R Kwak; Koen Marien; Juan M Melero-Martin; Lance L Munn; Roberto F Nicosia; Agnes Noel; Jussi Nurro; Anna-Karin Olsson; Tatiana V Petrova; Kristian Pietras; Roberto Pili; Jeffrey W Pollard; Mark J Post; Paul H A Quax; Gabriel A Rabinovich; Marius Raica; Anna M Randi; Domenico Ribatti; Curzio Ruegg; Reinier O Schlingemann; Stefan Schulte-Merker; Lois E H Smith; Jonathan W Song; Steven A Stacker; Jimmy Stalin; Amber N Stratman; Maureen Van de Velde; Victor W M van Hinsbergh; Peter B Vermeulen; Johannes Waltenberger; Brant M Weinstein; Hong Xin; Bahar Yetkin-Arik; Seppo Yla-Herttuala; Mervin C Yoder; Arjan W Griffioen Journal: Angiogenesis Date: 2018-08 Impact factor: 9.596
Authors: J Arts; P Angibaud; A Mariën; W Floren; B Janssens; P King; J van Dun; L Janssen; T Geerts; R W Tuman; D L Johnson; L Andries; M Jung; M Janicot; K van Emelen Journal: Br J Cancer Date: 2007-11-13 Impact factor: 7.640