New method of analysing lymphoedema – Making digital 3D images of tissue

3D computer reconstruction of a healthy human skin biobsy. Spatial arrangement of blood vessels (white) and lymphatic vessels (red) is distinctly visible. JCI Insight

When researchers and physicians analyse tissue, for example in order to investigate any pathological changes, they often look at the tissue samples under the light microscope. However, producing meaningful images is not always easy.

Researchers at the Cells-in-Motion Cluster of Excellence at the University of Münster and at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Biomedicine in Münster have now developed a new method which, in the case of lymphoedema, can create digital 3D images of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels of entire tissue biopsies.

This method will help to analyse the underlying changes of the blood and lymphatic vessels in lymphoedema in a more detailed way. “We’re doing a digital three-dimensional histopathology,” explains Dr. René Hägerling, lead author of the study which has just been published in the latest issue of the “JCI Insight” journal.

The process has involved interdisciplinary collaboration between biochemists, chemists, computer scientists, biologists and physicians. The researchers analysed three skin biopsies taken from healthy persons and one skin biopsy of a patient with lymphoedema.

Using light sheet microscopy they produced thousands of individual optical sections for each sample. Using a special programming system called Voreen the researchers assembled the individual optical sections on the computer and produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of the tissue structure.

The new method – called VIPAR – enables researchers for the first time to generate 3D reconstructions of skin biopsies, visualize them and extract characteristic parameters of the tissue. This method differs from traditional histological analyses, in which a tissue sample is sliced into many sections and each individual section is observed two-dimensionally.

Original publication:
Hägerling R, Drees D, Scherzinger A, Dierkes C, Martin-Almedina S, Butz S, Gordon K, Schäfers M, Hinrichs K, Ostergaard P, Vestweber D, Goerge T, Mansour S, Jiang X, Mortimer PS, Kiefer F. VIPAR, a quantitative approach to 3D histopathology applied to lymphatic malformations. JCI Insight 2017;2, DOI 10.1172/jci.insight.93424.

https://www.uni-muenster.de/Cells-in-Motion/newsviews/2017/08-28.html – The detailed story on the Website of the Cells-in-Motion Cluster of Excellence
https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/93424 – Abstract (published in the “JCI Insight” journal)

Media Contact

Juliane Albrecht idw - Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

All latest news from the category: Life Sciences and Chemistry

Articles and reports from the Life Sciences and chemistry area deal with applied and basic research into modern biology, chemistry and human medicine.

Valuable information can be found on a range of life sciences fields including bacteriology, biochemistry, bionics, bioinformatics, biophysics, biotechnology, genetics, geobotany, human biology, marine biology, microbiology, molecular biology, cellular biology, zoology, bioinorganic chemistry, microchemistry and environmental chemistry.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors