Measuring the fractal dimension of the microvascular network of the chorioallantoic membrane

The chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) of the avian chick is an often used in vivo model to investigate angiogenesis. An image processing was developed to detect the vessels and especially the capillaries of the CAM. The result is a binary image of the microvascular network. To quantify the angiogenesis, the fractal dimension was calculated by the box-, information- and correlation-dimensions. The influence of noise on the result was investigated. The stability criterion for the fractal dimension was used to evaluate the most suitable dimension. The correlation-dimension has due to its definition the best properties in regards to the box- and information-dimensions. A native CAM possesses a box-dimension of 1.8606 +/- 0.0093, an information-dimension of 1.853 +/- 0.018 and a correlation-dimension of 1.844 +/- 0.021.