Fractal dimension of hepatopancreas of white shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei infected with Hepatobacter penaei bacteria (NHPB)

In the present work, fractal geometry is applied to histological sections of the hepatopancreas tissue of white shrimp (L. vannamei) experimentally infected with Hepatobacter penaei bacteria (NHPB), in order to perform an analysis of the morphology adopted by the different cellular components damaged by this intracellular-type pathogen bacteria. The fractal dimension of the digital images of the histological sections was obtained by using a code written in Matlab, which uses the box counting method to determine the differences between areas infected with NHPB and without infection. The fractal dimension of histological sections of the uninfected hepatopancreas was less than the fractal dimension of the hepatopancreas infected by NHPB, generating novel information about the fractal morphological characterization of this type of biological systems in relation to this pathology.