Quantification of alignment of vascular smooth muscle cells

Vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) are essential components that keep the tonus of the arterial network, which is the channel used to conduct the blood from the heart to the peripheral areas of the body. It is known that mechanical and architectural changes in VSMCs may lead to functional modifications in the cardiovascular system; therefore, the quantitative characterization of these changes can help to elucidate questions that remain unclear in pathological situations, such as hypertension, vasospasm, vascular hypertrophy, and atherosclerosis. In this work, we have developed a new framework of image processing using the Sobel operator, associated with statistical analysis, to determine the degree of local alignment of actin filaments, which we found to be directly related with the distensibility of the arterial wall. We have also compared these results with the rigidity of the cytoskeleton of VSMCs. The results suggest that the alignment degree increases from peripheral arteries, such as carotid and femoral, to central arteries, as well coronary and thoracic aorta, which can indicate that the level of local alignment of the actin fibers in VSMCs is related with the mechanical behavior of the arterial wall. © 2018 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry.