Airspace Diameter Map-A Quantitative Measurement of All Pulmonary Airspaces to Characterize Structural Lung Diseases

(1) Background: Stereological estimations significantly contributed to our understanding of lung anatomy and physiology. Taking stereology fully 3-dimensional facilitates the estimation of novel parameters. (2) Methods: We developed a protocol for the analysis of all airspaces of an entire lung. It includes (i) high-resolution synchrotron radiation-based X-ray tomographic microscopy, (ii) image segmentation using the free machine-learning tool Ilastik and ImageJ, and (iii) calculation of the airspace diameter distribution using a diameter map function. To evaluate the new pipeline, lungs from adult mice with cystic fibrosis (CF)-like lung disease (

• Blaskovic, S.
• Anagnostopoulou, P.
• Borisova, E.
• Schittny, D.
• Donati, Y.
• Haberthür, D.
• Zhou-Suckow, Z.
• Mall, M. A.
• Schlepütz, C. M.
• Stampanoni, M.
• Barazzone-Argiroffo, C.
• Schittny, J. C.