Automated angiogenesis quantification through advanced image processing techniques

Angiogenesis, the formation of blood vessels in tumors, is an interactive process between tumor, endothelial and stromal cells in order to create a network for oxygen and nutrients supply, necessary for tumor growth. According to this, angiogenic activity is considered a suitable method for both tumor growth or inhibition detection. The angiogenic potential is usually estimated by counting the number of blood vessels in particular sections. One of the most popular assay tissues to study the angiogenesis phenomenon is the developing chick embryo and its chorioallantoic membrane (CAM), which is a highly vascular structure lining the inner surface of the egg shell. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an automated image analysis method that would give an unbiased quantification of the micro-vessel density and growth in angiogenic CAM images. The presented method has been validated by comparing automated results to manual counts over a series of digital chick embryo photos. The results indicate the high accuracy of the tool, which has been thus extensively used for tumor growth detection at different stages of embryonic development.