A fast, robust and scale-independent approach to estimate vessel diameters in intravital fluorescence microscopy images

Analyzing dynamic biological systems, such as blood vessel growth in healing wounds or tumour development, requires high spatial and temporal resolution. Intravital fluorescence microscopy allows for longitudinal subcellular imaging, but it requires the use of advanced image analysis tools in order to quantitatively extract the relevant parameters or the topology of the underlying network structure to subsequently model and simulate such a system mathematically. We will present a fast and robust approach that estimates the vessel diameter with a low coefficient of error < 6% in settings that are typical for such in-vivo imaging scenarios with a low signal-to-noise ratio and often sub-optimal and uneven background illumination. The generated vessel network is geometrically cleansed for an optimal topological representation