(ADCIS, Herouville saint Clair France) software (Fig. 2A). A region of
interest (ROI), represented by a circle 1400 pixels in diameter, was
determined and positioned on the center of each photograph. In this
configuration, the spatial resolution was 2. 7 μm per pixel. Images
were processed with Aphelion® software to obtain a binary picture,
which permitted an estimation of different vascular parameters:
vascular density (VD, as a %); ratio of blood vessel pixels to all other
pixels in the region of interest; total network length (L, in μm); sum of
the lengths of all vascular-network branches; and mean diameter of
the vascular-network branches (D, in μm). For easier comparison
between the groups, the data sets were normalized at the value at D0
(100%). Based on this normalization, results are presented as the
variations in the vascular parameters between D0 and D28.