Guidolin Diego, Porzionato Andrea, Tortorella Cinzia, Macchi Veronica, De Caro Raffaele
Section of Human Anatomy, Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Padova Padova, Italy.
Front Physiol. 2014 Nov 5;5:432. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2014.00432. eCollection 2014.
The carotid body (CB) may undergo different structural changes during perinatal development, aging, or in response to environmental stimuli. In the previous literature, morphometric approaches to evaluate these changes have considered quantitative first order parameters, such as volumes or densities, while changes in spatial disposition and/or complexity of structural components have not yet been considered. In the present study, different strategies for addressing morphological complexity of CB, apart from the overall amount of each tissue component, were evaluated and compared. In particular, we considered the spatial distribution of connective tissue in the carotid bodies of young control subjects, young opiate-related deaths and aged subjects, through analysis of dispersion (Morisita's index), gray level co-occurrence matrix (entropy, angular second moment, variance, correlation), and fractal analysis (fractal dimension, lacunarity). Opiate-related deaths and aged subjects showed a comparable increase in connective tissue with respect to young controls. However, the Morisita's index (p < 0.05), angular second moment (p < 0.05), fractal dimension (p < 0.01), and lacunarity (p < 0.01) permitted to identify significant differences in the disposition of the connective tissue between these two series. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was also calculated to evaluate the efficiency of each parameter. The fractal dimension and lacunarity, with areas under the ROC curve of 0.9651 (excellent accuracy) and 0.8835 (good accuracy), respectively, showed the highest discriminatory power. They evidenced higher level of structural complexity in the carotid bodies of opiate-related deaths than old controls, due to more complex branching of intralobular connective tissue. Further analyses will have to consider the suitability of these approaches to address other morphological features of the CB, such as different cell populations, vascularization, and innervation.
颈动脉体（CB）在围产期发育、衰老过程中或对环境刺激作出反应时，可能会经历不同的结构变化。在以往的文献中，评估这些变化的形态测量方法考虑的是定量的一阶参数，如体积或密度，而结构成分的空间布局和/或复杂性变化尚未得到考虑。在本研究中，除了每种组织成分的总量外，还对处理CB形态复杂性的不同策略进行了评估和比较。具体而言，我们通过离散分析（森下指数）、灰度共生矩阵（熵、角二阶矩、方差、相关性）和分形分析（分形维数、空隙率），研究了年轻对照受试者、年轻阿片类药物相关死亡者和老年受试者颈动脉体中结缔组织的空间分布。与年轻对照相比，阿片类药物相关死亡者和老年受试者的结缔组织均有类似程度的增加。然而，森下指数（p<0.05）、角二阶矩（p<0.05）、分形维数（p<0.01）和空隙率（p<0.01）显示这两个系列之间结缔组织的布局存在显著差异。还计算了受试者工作特征（ROC）曲线以评估每个参数的效率。分形维数和空隙率的ROC曲线下面积分别为0.9651（精度极佳）和0.8835（精度良好），显示出最高的鉴别能力。结果表明，由于小叶内结缔组织分支更为复杂，与老年对照相比，阿片类药物相关死亡者的颈动脉体结构复杂性更高。进一步的分析将不得不考虑这些方法是否适合处理CB的其他形态特征，如不同的细胞群、血管化和神经支配。
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