Use of a desktop scanner and spreadsheet software for mapping arterial disease

Abstract

Summary:Mapping the surface area and distribution of atherosclerosis has so far required photographic, video, or photomicrographic imaging of the inner surface of the arterial wall, as well as laborious manual or sophisticated image processing methods of quantification. We investigated whether comparable results could be obtained by using a conventional flatbed scanner and readily available spreadsheet software. Lipid-rich lesions near 21 aortic branches from cholesterol-fed rabbits were mapped using a scanner-based technique and an established photomicrographic technique. When the tissue was counterstained and held on the scanner by a transparent weight to obtain adequate contrast and prevent detection of adventitial staining, the areas of lipid deposition detected by the two methods correlated highly (R 2 =0.99). Discrepancies arose mainly at the edges of lesions, probably because of alignment errors and better flattening of the tissue on the scanner; when these were accounted for, discrepancies occurred in <1% of the total area examined. The new method produces results comparable with previous procedures, but is much more rapid and requires only office equipment and software.

Atheroprotective effects of dietary l-arginine increase with age in cholesterol-fed rabbits

“…The lesions appeared red against a blue background. This technique gives results that are comparable with established lesion imaging methods ( 23 ) .…”

“…Each segment was placed, luminal surface down, on a flatbed scanner (Perfection 1660 Photo; Epson, Nagano, Japan) and scanned at a nominal resolution of 3200 dpi using Twain software (Vol. 1.00; Epson) ( 23 ) . The lesions appeared red against a blue background.…”

“…For the whole segments, the entire scanned image was used. Each image or sub-image was imported into spreadsheet software (Excel, Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA) as a background, and the spreadsheet was adjusted to give a superimposed transparent grid ( 23 ) . For the branches, a grid of 20 × 30 squares, each equivalent to 120 μm in length before magnification, was used.…”

“…Our previous study has shown that manual scoring of disease is repeatable (24) . Coding the presence of disease as '1' permitted mean maps and mean frequencies to be calculated by the spreadsheet software using simple mathematical operations (23) . To obtain the average distributions near the branches, maps were combined using the centre of the ostium as a datum.…”

Change of Direction in the Biomechanics of Atherosclerosis

“…A grid with line spacing equivalent to 120 μ m was superimposed on each image so that the presence or absence of lesions could be manually scored in each square, and frequency-of-occurrence (“prevalence”) maps were obtained by combining the maps. 9 …”