REAVER: A Program for Improved Analysis of High ‐resolution Vascular Network Images

We present REAVER (Rapid Editable Analysis of Vessel Elements Routine), an open‐source tool that researchers can use to analyze high‐resolution 2D fluorescent images of blood vessel networks, and assess its performance compared to alternative image analysis pr ograms. Using a dataset of manually analyzed images from a variety of murine tissues as a ground‐truth, REAVER exhibited the highest accuracy and precision for all vessel architecture metrics quantified, including vessel length density, vessel area fraction, mean vessel diameter, and branchpoint c ount, along with the highest pixel‐by‐pixel accuracy for the segmentation of the blood vessel network. In instances where REAVER’s automated segmentation is inaccurate, we show that combining manual curation with automated analysis improves the accuracy of vessel architecture metrics. REAVER c an be used to quantify differences in blood vessel architectures, making it useful in experiments designed to evaluate the effects of different external perturbations (e.g. drugs or disease states).

Source: Microcirculation - March 21, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Bruce A. Corliss, Richard W. Doty, Corbin Mathews, Paul A. Yates, Tingting Zhang, Shayn M. Peirce Tags: ORIGINAL RESEARCH Source Type: research