Annexins are a large family of calcium binding proteins that associate with cell membrane phospholipids and are involved in various cellular processes including endocytosis, exocytosis and membrane-cytoskeletal organization. Despite studies on numerous Annexin proteins, the function of Annexin A3 (Anxa3) is largely unknown. Our studies identify Anxa3 as a unique marker of the endothelial and my...

The formation of blood vessels during embryonic development is a complex process that requires the coordination of multiple soluble signals, as well as coordinated communication of cells with one another and with their surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM). The process of vessel assembly can be dissected into discernible steps that appear to require unique controls (depicted in the Figure, pan...

The correct development of blood vessels is crucial for all aspects of tissue growth and physiology in vertebrates. The formation of an elaborate hierarchically branched network of endothelial tubes, through either angiogenesis or vasculogenesis, relies on a series of coordinated morphogenic events, but how individual endothelial cells adopt specific phenotypes and how they coordinate their beh...

In laparoscopic surgery, because of lack of tactile sensation and 3D visual feedback, it is difficult to identify a blood vessel position intraoperatively. We combined the color and geometry in two steps of Neural Network image processing. Application of LVQ (Learning vector quantization) neural networks has enabled the system to overcome the complexity of distribution of samples. The performan...

Many vascular clinical applications require a vessel segmentation process that is able to extract both the centerline and the surface of the blood vessels. However, noise and topology issues (such as kissing vessels) prevent existing algorithm from being able to easily retrieve such a complex system as the brain vasculature. We propose here a new blood vessel tracking algorithm that 1) detects ...

Numerical flow simulation is useful for understanding fluid phenomena such as blood flow or pulse wave propagation in the systemic arteries. For numerical analysis of intravascular flow, it is important to consider not only incompressible assumption and blood viscosity but also the viscoelasticity of the blood vessel wall; however, blood flow in vivo is complicated because of the unsteadiness o...

The ultrasonic treatment of varicose veins uses high-intensity focused ultrasound, in which a blood vessel is contracted by converting acoustic energy into thermal energy. In this study, we propose a phantom of varicose veins that can be applied for the efficient evaluation of ultrasonic treatment in varicose veins. The proposed phantom consisted of glycerol base tissue equivalent material, ves...

The basic molecular mechanisms governing how endothelial cells, periendothelial cells and matrix molecules interact with each other and with numerous growth factors and receptors, to form blood vessels have been presented. The many insights gained from this basic knowledge are being extended to further understand pathological angiogenesis associated with disorders such as arterial stenosis, myo...