Pulmonary microangiography. A comparison of in vitro versus in vivo perfusion techniques in dogs

Because of a need to correlate pulmonary microvascular changes with physiologic data during lung injury, in vitro and in vivo pulmonary capillary microangiography was performed on normal dogs and those subjected to oleic acid injury and glass bead microembolization. During these studies, no significant differences were found between microangiograms obtained after in vitro and in vivo perfusion techniques. This work therefore suggests that in vitro microangiography yields reliable morphologic information more conveniently than more expensive and difficult in vivo techniques. In vitro pulmonary capillary microangiography can provide reliable structural information which can be correlated with physiologic data.