Difference in the three-dimensional structure of the sinusoids between hepatocellular carcinoma and cirrhotic liver

The purpose of the present study was to estimate the difference in three-dimensional (3-D) structure of sinusoids between hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cirrhotic liver, by the use of topology. Ten surgically resected lesions of HCC and 10 lesions of liver cirrhosis (LC) were used. Computer-aided reconstruction models of HCC sinusoids and LC sinusoids were developed from 20 4 microns thick serial tissue sections from each specimen. A topological invariant, called the first Betti number p1, was used to estimate the complexity degree of the 3-D sinusoidal structure. The mean p1 of the sinusoidal network in the examined tissue, 200 x 200 x 80 microns3 in size, was 46.5 +/- 33.0 in 10 HCC and 84.9 +/- 19.1 in 10 cirrhotic livers. There was a statistically significant difference between the two values (P < 0.01), while there was no significant difference in the sinusoidal volume of the same size tissue between the HCC and the cirrhotic liver. It was found, therefore, that the sinusoidal network of HCC was more sparsely and coarsely knit in 3-D space than that of the cirrhotic liver.