Abstract
Microstructures in the liver are primarily composed of hepatocyte, hepatic blood vessel, sinusoid, and biliary vessels, bile canaliculi. Since each hepatocyte comes in contact with sinusoid and bile canaliculi, these vessels form three-dimensional (3D) periodic network patterns. In this manuscript, we focus on the spatial patterns of sinusoid. First, we proposed an approach for segmentation base on the Turing reaction-diffusion (RD) model. The images obtained using a confocal laser scanning microscope (CLSM) alone cannot detect three-dimensional (3D) ddstructures, for example of the endothelial cells that compose blood vessels, and require segmentation for 3D interpretation. We performed segmentation of CLSM images of sinusoidal endothelial cells using the proposed RD algorithm. Moreover, we discuss potential applications of this algorithm. Then, we report our approach to describe the function of morphology of sinusoidal microstructures using mathematical expressions, which are known as fractal dimensions. Measuring fractal dimensions of sinusoidal network patterns, we address the morphology of branching network structures quantitatively.
