Measurement of Vascular Density

Determination of the number of microvessels in tissue is of great importance in the assessment of studies of vascular development, angiogenesis, and rarefaction (1 ). Numerous techniques, such as immunohistochemical staining, fluorescence injection, and India ink or microfil perfusion have been developed for microvascular visualization. In this section, we describe a micro-vascular visualization technique (2 ), which utilizes rhodamine-labeled Griffonia simplicifolia (GS-I) lectin to define both perfused and unperfused microvessels ranging from small arteries (20 μm) to normal capillaries (3-6 μm) to venous capillaries (6-9 μm), combined with a computerized image processing technique that rapidly and automatically determines vascular density in tissue sections (3 ).