Three-dimensional visualization of lung blood flow heterogeneity based on fluorescent microsphere technique and fractal dimension: The Blood Flow Analysis System - BFA System

The heterogeneity of regional pulmonary blood flow (RPBF) can be assessed b y fractal analysis. The fractal dimension (FD) is a scale-independent measu re of spatial heterogeneity of blood flow. The relative dispersion (RD) is often used to obtain the heterogeneity of RPBF but it is influenced by the resolution of measurement. The Blood Flow Analysis (BFA) System was develop ed in Delphi to represent the three-dimensional structure of lung blood flo w and calculates statistics of FD, RE, spatial correlation of neighbored ti ssue samples and shows histograms of blood flows at diverse time points dur ing different experiments. The BFA System reads a text file with flows, mea sured with fluorescent microsphere technique, and constructs the: lung anat omy with volumetric pixels showing the flows with a color schema. It is pos sible to rotate the lungs into two axis (XY) and the statistics are shown w ith 3D graphics. The System maintains a database with data from various stu dies at same time. The BFA System was validated with four data sets fi om p revious experiments. The BFA System has shown consistency and it is a new t ool to help researchers during lung perfusion studies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Sc ience Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.