Fig. 3: HiP-CT analysis of the kidney to measure glomerular morphology and nephron number.
a, Top left, HiP-CT datasets at three resolutions (25, 6 and 1.3 µm per voxel) obtained from a human kidney, aligned and overlaid. a, Top right, measurement of the parenchymal volume, semi-automatically segmented (green). a, Middle, the dataset at 6 µm per voxel with the virtual biopsy cylinder is shown in white; the parenchymal volume within the cylinder was measured. A representative 2D slice with an inset shows four labeled glomeruli. In total, 853 glomeruli that were within the cylinder were counted; a blue + sign is used to denote the approximate center of each glomerulus. a, Bottom, the dataset at 1.3 µm with virtual biopsy (red cylinder). The 13 glomeruli within this cylinder were segmented in 3D as shown in the 2D representative slice with inset. b, Comparison of HiP-CT with an aligned histopathological section (n = 1) (stained with hematoxylin and eosin (H&E)) taken after all HiP-CT scanning was finished. The left-hand column shows light micrographs of H&E-stained histopathological sections, and the right-hand column shows 2D tomograms of HiP-CT; yellow boxes denote images that have been pseudocolored (from HiP-CT) or converted in gray levels and inverted in contrast (from histological observations).
