Speaker
Dr
David Haberthür
(TOMCAT, Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut)
Description
The difficulty of characterizing individual respiratory functional units of the lung from two-dimensional physical sections leads to a limited knowledge about biological parameters like volume and surface of these so-called acini. The three-dimensional architecture of the acini has a strong influence on ventilation and particle deposition.
We developed a method to semi-automatically extract individual acini from rat lungs lungs imaged by high-resolution synchrotron radiation based X-ray tomographic microscopy [1] and estimated their volume, surface area and number of alveoli. 43 Rat acini were isolated by semiautomatically closing the airways at the transition from conducting to gas-exchanging airways.
We estimated a mean internal acinar volume of 1.148 cubic mm, a mean acinar surface area of 73.9 square mm, and a mean of 8470 alveoli per acinus. Assuming that the acini are similarly sized throughout different regions of the lung, we calculated that a rat lung contains 5470 ± 833 acini.
The proposed method allows for the non-destructive and semi-automatic extraction of individual acini. Either manual stereological or automatic analysis make our approach well suited for the fast and reliable characterization of a large number of individual acini in healthy, diseased, or transgenic lungs of different species, including humans.
[1] David Haberthür et al. http://doi.org/amg
Primary author
Dr
David Haberthür
(TOMCAT, Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut)
Co-authors
Eveline Yao
(Institute of Anatomy, Bern)
Prof.
Johannes Schittny
(Institute of Anatomy, Bern)
Prof.
Marco Stampanoni
(TOMCAT, Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institut)
Dr
Stefan Tschanz
(Institute of Anatomy, Bern)
Mr
Sébastien Barré
(Institute of Anatomy, Bern)
