Cerebral microhemorrhages (CMHs) occur due to ruptures in cerebral microvessels that cause deposits of blood in the brain. Hypertension (HTN) is a major risk factor for CMHs, which have been associated with cognitive decline and ischemic strokes. Despite the clinical significance of CMHs, our understanding of CMH formation remains limited. To address this gap, our group has employed a perfusion-based vascular label with tissue clearing to enable three-dimensional visualization of CMHs with the surrounding microvasculature in HTN mice. Vessel diameters surrounding a CMH were approximately 4.22±0.81 µm. Vessel density in CMH positive tissue regions was approximately 0.083±0.017 µm-1.
Cerebral microhemorrhages (CMHs) are associated with cognitive impairment and several conditions, diseases, and normal aging processes. Current histological methods manually identify and quantify Prussian blue-stained CMHs, which can take months to complete. To speed up this labor-intensive process, we developed a spectroscopic, semi-automated approach. We used the ratio of the red and green intensities relative to the blue intensity squared to discriminate CMH-pixels from background pixels. We calculated a sensitivity and specificity of 83.75% and 99.74%, respectively. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.992 (95% confidence interval: 0.989-0.995). Future studies are needed to test if this approach works in other CMH models.
Cerebral microbleeds (CMB) are deposits of blood that accumulate within the brain. An increase in CMBs is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment and stroke. The types of vessels associated with CMB formation remains unclear. We recently demonstrated the combined use of exogenous labels, vessel painting, and optical clearing to achieve three-dimensional views of blood vessels and CMBs. Here, we aimed to characterize brain vasculature by quantifying key vasculature-related metrics. An automated algorithm was developed to segment blood vessels within fluorescence images. An open-source neuron tracing software, neuTube, was then used to quantify blood vessel diameters.
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