title: Quantitative analysis of rabbit coronary atherosclerosis. Practical techniques utilizing open-source software.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Coronary atherosclerosis is widely recognized as a major cause of sudden cardiac death, acute myocardial infarction, and unstable angina pectoris. However, the techniques for quantitative analysis of coronary atherosclerosis have not been standardized and there is still a need for reduction in inaccuracies.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study reports a series of practical techniques to quantitatively analyze microscopic lesions of coronary atherosclerosis in myocardial infarction-prone Watanabe heritable hyperlipidemic rabbits. First, we applied the stenosis to evaluate the severity of coronary atherosclerosis, which was based on a comprehensive analysis of 7 blocks in each rabbit heart. Then, by splitting the RGB image to monochrome image and the setting Gray Threshold, cellular components were quantified by maximal separation from background tissue; all of these works were based on ImageJ software.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Blocks I, II, and V had the most severe coronary atherosclerosis, and the numbers of macrophages and smooth muscle cells in atherosclerotic lesions were accurately calculated as well.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We introduced a quantitative analysis to study microscopic lesions of the coronary atherosclerosis, which. may be widely applied in various animal models.
authors.forename: Guangwei
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Ahmed
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: BilalWaqar
authors.forename: Lijuan
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Ming
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.forename: Cangbao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Qi
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Yu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000473:pathology*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D008297:Male; D011817:Rabbits; D012984:Software