title: The use of fractal dimension analysis in estimation of blood vessels shape in transplantable mammary adenocarcinoma in Wistar rats after photodynamic therapy combined with cysteine protease inhibitors.
abstract: Fractal dimension analysis (FDA) is modern mathematical method widely used to describing of complex and chaotic shapes when classic methods fail. The main aim of this study was evaluating the influence of photodynamic therapy (PDT) with cystein proteases inhibitors (CPI) on the number and morphology of blood vessels inside tumor and on increase of effectiveness of combined therapy in contrast to PDT and CPI used separately. Animals were divided into four groups: control, treated using only PDT, treated using only CPI and treated using combined therapy, PDT and CPI. Results showed that time of animal survival and depth of necrosis inside tumor were significantly higher in CPI+PDT group in contrast to other groups. The higher value of fractal dimension (FD) was observed in control group, while the lowest value was found in the group which was treated by cystein protease inhibitors. The differences between FD were observed in CPI group and PDT+CPI group in comparison to control group. Our results revealed that fractal dimension analysis is a very useful tool in estimating differences between irregular shapes like blood vessels in PDT treated tumors. Thus, the implementation of FDA algorithms could be useful method in evaluating the efficacy of PDT.
authors.affiliation: Department of Dental Surgery, Wroclaw Medical University, Krakowska 26, 50-425 Wroclaw, Poland. kjurczysz@interia.pl
authors.forename: Kamil
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jurczyszyn
authors.forename: Beata J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Osiecka
authors.forename: Piotr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ziółkowski
mesh_terms: D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000473:pathology; D000465:Algorithms; D000818:Animals; D001808:Blood Vessels / Q000473:pathology*; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D003198:Computer Simulation; D015853:Cysteine Proteinase Inhibitors / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005260:Female; D017709:Fractals; D015674:Mammary Neoplasms, Animal / Q000473:pathology; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009336:Necrosis; D009368:Neoplasm Transplantation; D010778:Photochemotherapy / Q000379:methods*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D015853:Cysteine Proteinase Inhibitors