PURPOSE: Quantitative description of hepatic microvascular bed could contribute to understanding perfusion CT imaging. Micro-CT is a useful method for the visualization and quantification of capillary-passable vascular corrosion casts. Our aim was to develop and validate open-source software for the statistical description of the vascular networks in micro-CT scans. METHODS: Porcine hepatic microvessels were injected with Biodur E20 resin, and the resulting corrosion casts were scanned with 1.9-4.7 [Formula: see text] resolution. The microvascular network was quantified using newly developed QuantAn software both in randomly selected volume probes (n = 10) and in arbitrarily outlined hepatic lobules (n = 4). The volumes, surfaces, lengths, and numbers of microvessel segments were estimated and validated in the same data sets with manual stereological counting. Calculations of tortuosity, radius histograms, length histograms, exports of the skeletonized vascular network into open formats, and an assessment of the degree of their anisotropy were performed. RESULTS: Within hepatic lobules, the microvessels had a volume fraction of 0.13 [Formula: see text] 0.05, surface density of 21.0 [Formula: see text] 2.0 [Formula: see text], length density of 169.0 [Formula: see text] 40.2 [Formula: see text], and numerical density of 588.5 [Formula: see text] 283.1 [Formula: see text]. Sensitivity analysis of the automatic analysis to binary opening, closing, threshold offset, and aggregation radius of branching nodes was performed. CONCLUSION: The software QuantAn and its source code are openly available to researchers working in the field of stochastic geometry of microvessels in micro-CT scans or other three-dimensional imaging methods. The implemented methods comply with reproducible stereological techniques, and they were highly consistent with manual counting. Preliminary morphometrics of the classical hepatic lobules in pig were provided.

Biomedical Center Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen Charles University Prague Alej Svobody 76 323 00 Pilsen Czech Republic

Department of Anatomy Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen Charles University Prague Karlovarska 48 301 66 Pilsen Czech Republic

Department of Histology and Embryology Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen Charles University Prague Karlovarska 48 301 66 Pilsen Czech Republic

Department of Imaging methods Faculty of Medicine and University Hospital in Pilsen Alej Svobody 80 304 60 Pilsen Czech Republic

Department of Surgery Faculty of Medicine in Pilsen Charles University Prague Husova 3 306 05 Pilsen Czech Republic

European Centre of Excellence NTIS Faculty of Applied Sciences University of West Bohemia Univerzitní 22 306 14 Pilsen Czech Republic

New Technologies Research Centre University of West Bohemia Univerzitní 8 306 14 Pilsen Czech Republic

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