A morphometric tool applied to angiogenesis research based on vessel segmentation

Background It is now widely accepted that tumor growth and metastasis are angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis-dependent providing novel therapeutic targets in malignant disease [1-3]. A common feature of the tumor vessels studies is that the investigators focus on microvessel density overlooking other parameters that might be significant, such as the size and shape of the microvessels [4]. In many aspects, tumor vessels are different from normal vessels [5,6]. Studies have revealed the importance of the size and shape of blood vessels in, for example laryngeal tumors [7]. Our aim is to develop a morphometric tool able to perform an easy segmentation of blood and lymphatic vessels to study vascularization following the hypothesis that tumor prognosis may not only be influenced by microvascular density but also by the shape and size of the vessels. To this end a segmentation algorithm based on two complementary methodologies have been developed to segment close and open vessels.