title: Phase transition of the microvascular network architecture in human pathologies.
abstract: We have investigated the microvascular pattern in acquired or genetic diseases in humans. The lower gingival and vestibular oral mucosa, as well as the optic nerve head, was chosen to characterize the vascular pattern complexity due to the simple accessibility and visibility Local fractal dimensions, fractal dimension of the minimum path and Lempel-Ziv complexity have been used as operational numerical tools to characterize the microvascular networks. In the normal healthy subjects microvascular networks show nonlinear values corresponding to the complexity of a diffusion limited aggregation (DLA) model, while in several acquired or genetic diseases they are approaching the ones of an invasion percolation model.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Human Pathology and Oncology, University of Siena, Siena, Italy. gbianciardi@unisi.it
authors.forename: Giorgio
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bianciardi
authors.forename: Claudio
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Traversi
authors.forename: Ruggero
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cattaneo
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: De Felice
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Monaco
authors.forename: Gianmarco
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tosi
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Parrini
authors.forename: Giuseppe
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Latini
mesh_terms: D017709:Fractals; D005881:Gingiva / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D055806:Microvessels / Q000473:pathology*; D009061:Mouth Mucosa / Q000473:pathology; D009900:Optic Nerve / Q000473:pathology