Institute of Functional and Applied Anatomy, Hannover Medical School, Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, 30625, Hannover, Germany.
Biomedical Research in Endstage and Obstructive Lung Disease Hannover (BREATH), Member of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL), Hannover, Germany.
Histochem Cell Biol. 2021 Aug;156(2):83-93. doi: 10.1007/s00418-021-02013-9. Epub 2021 Jul 16.
The pulmonary vasculature consists of a large arterial and venous tree with a vast alveolar capillary network (ACN) in between. Both conducting blood vessels and the gas-exchanging capillaries are part of important human lung diseases, including bronchopulmonary dysplasia, pulmonary hypertension and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Morphological tools to investigate the different parts of the pulmonary vasculature quantitatively and in three dimensions are crucial for a better understanding of the contribution of the blood vessels to the pathophysiology and effects of lung diseases. In recent years, new stereological methods and imaging techniques have expanded the analytical tool box and therefore the conclusive power of morphological analyses of the pulmonary vasculature. Three of these developments are presented and discussed in this review article, namely (1) stereological quantification of the number of capillary loops, (2) serial block-face scanning electron microscopy of the ACN and (3) labeling of branching generations in light microscopic sections based on arterial tree segmentations of micro-computed tomography data sets of whole lungs. The implementation of these approaches in research work requires expertise in lung preparation, multimodal imaging at different scales, an advanced IT infrastructure and expertise in image analysis. However, they are expected to provide important data that cannot be obtained by previously existing methodology.
肺血管系统由一个大型的动脉和静脉树以及其间的巨大肺泡毛细血管网络（ACN）组成。传导血液的血管和进行气体交换的毛细血管都是包括支气管肺发育不良、肺动脉高压和慢性阻塞性肺疾病在内的重要人类肺部疾病的组成部分。用于定量和三维研究肺血管不同部分的形态学工具对于更好地理解血管对肺部疾病的病理生理学和影响至关重要。近年来，新的体视学方法和成像技术扩展了分析工具包，因此也提高了肺血管形态学分析的结论性。本文综述了其中三种发展，即（1）毛细血管环数量的体视学定量，（2）ACN 的连续块面扫描电子显微镜，以及（3）基于全肺 micro-CT 数据集的动脉树分段对光镜切片中分支世代的标记。在研究工作中实施这些方法需要具备肺部准备、不同尺度的多模态成像、先进的 IT 基础设施以及图像分析专业知识。然而，它们有望提供以前的方法无法获得的重要数据。
