Determining Measurement Variability of Functional Image Types in Capillary Networks

Detailed models of the microvasculature are important to help create accurate tissue oxygenation models, and for understanding the control of blood flow on the level of capillaries. In the pasts, the majority of computer models rely on simplifying and averaging blood flow and oxygen delivery within a region (2), but being able to visualize and analyze actual microcirculation beds provides more detailed information about what is happening in vivo. Information regarding red blood cell (RBC) distribution and oxygenation can be determined using the video analysis software developed by Pittman et al (2). This MATLAB program uses video clips of microcirculation beds in mice and compresses the frames into a functional image that can be analyzed on different settings. In this paper, we aim to determine whether there is a significant difference between the two different wavelengths of light that can be used in this imaging systemisobestic (ISO) and oxygen sensitive (O2), and between three of the functional image settingsvariance, sum of the absolute differences (SAD) and optical density (OD). If the null hypothesis, that there is no difference, is correct, the different settings could be used interchangeably in an experiment. As different areas of an image are more easily viewed on different settings, this could be useful for extracting a larger amount of data from the videos. Theory