AUTHOR=Guidolin Diego , Porzionato Andrea , Tortorella Cinzia , Macchi Veronica , De Caro Raffaele TITLE=Fractal analysis of the structural complexity of the connective tissue in human carotid bodies JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physiology VOLUME=5 YEAR=2014 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2014.00432 DOI=10.3389/fphys.2014.00432 ISSN=1664-042X ABSTRACT=
The carotid body (CB) may undergo different structural changes during perinatal development, aging, or in response to environmental stimuli. In the previous literature, morphometric approaches to evaluate these changes have considered quantitative first order parameters, such as volumes or densities, while changes in spatial disposition and/or complexity of structural components have not yet been considered. In the present study, different strategies for addressing morphological complexity of CB, apart from the overall amount of each tissue component, were evaluated and compared. In particular, we considered the spatial distribution of connective tissue in the carotid bodies of young control subjects, young opiate-related deaths and aged subjects, through analysis of dispersion (Morisita's index), gray level co-occurrence matrix (entropy, angular second moment, variance, correlation), and fractal analysis (fractal dimension, lacunarity). Opiate-related deaths and aged subjects showed a comparable increase in connective tissue with respect to young controls. However, the Morisita's index (