Two light attenuation models for automatic diameter measurement of the blood vessels.

The Lambert-Beer's law of the absorption of the light by blood in a vessel is used to model the light attenuation by a blood vessel that is transilluminated. Two models are used for an automatic vessel diameter determination for intravital microscopy. Some requirements for the photometric system have to be met in order to reduce errors due to light scattering. In these conditions, a videodensitometric pattern of the cross-section of the vessel can be fitted by the different models in order to obtain the diameter of the vessel. The first model proposed uses a uniformly distributed red blood cell column. A non-linear estimation of the diameter is done with the Levenberg-Marquardt method in 2 sec, using a regular PC386 microcomputer. The second one takes in account the presence of a plasma layer and computes the diameter of the red blood cell column and the diameter of the vessel in one minute. These models can be used for pharmacological studies or for a better understanding of the formation of a transilluminated intravital image. They can also be used for angiographic images.