Morphometric Features of Different Types of Bifurcations in the Splenic Intraorgan Arterial System in Individuals of Different Gender and Age

INTRODUCTION: A promising direction that has recently emerged in morphology is investigation of the arterial bed of various human organs as fractal or quasi-fractal systems. Conceptual models have been developed permitting a quantitative description of the vascular bed features. This approach will help to create a morphometric standard of the intraorgan blood flow, which will be useful in objective diagnosis of probable deviations from the normal structure.

AIM: To identify the morphometric features of various types of bifurcations of the splenic intraorgan arterial bed in individuals of different gender and age.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The characteristics of the splenic intraorgan arterial bed have been studied in 67 individuals who died suddenly and from accidental causes at the age of 21 to 60 years. The arterial bed was represented as connected graphs with vertices corresponding to the bifurcation points of arteries, and edges to the arterial segments. The diameter and length of an arterial segment were measured on corrosion preparations. Based on the morphometry data, the following parameters were determined: generation number, division level, form factor FF1, branching factor ƞ and asymmetry factor γ. Statistical analysis was carried out using the R language.

RESULTS: The total number of examined arterial bifurcations was 6,840. The examined bifurcations were located at 20 division levels and presented 8 generations. In the structure of the vascular bed, bifurcations of neutral kind (0) predominated with the relative quantity 51%. The least numerous was type 2 bifurcations — 9%. The intermediate position was taken by open (1) bifurcations accounting for about 40% in the vascular bed structure.

CONCLUSIONS: The intraorgan arterial bed of the spleen is a quasi-fractal system consisting of three types of bifurcations — open, neutral and closed. A relative number of different types of bifurcations differs depending on gender and age and is also related to the generation number and division level.