Fig. 5: Distances between immune cells and endothelial cells in 3D vs 2D.

a Histograms of distance to nearest endothelial cells from each immune cell type (CD68, T Helper, T Killer, and T Reg). 3D distance to immune cells is typically much shorter (on average, ~56 µm in 3D vs 108 µm in 2D); b Two sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov test (two-sided) was performed to confirm that there is statistically significant difference between the 2D and 3D distributions for all immune cell types (D = 0.43, p value <2.2e-16; n = 13,481 (in 2D) and n = 13,489 (in 3D) independent immune cells were included in each distribution). c Distance between immune cells and nearest endothelial cells is consistent with aging and sun exposure. Violin plots are shown for each donor and sorted by age. There was a trend for a higher number of T killer cells closer to endothelial cells in younger vs older patients (spearman correlation = −0.73 (p = 0.02, adjusted p value = 0.08, Supplementary Fig. 7c (n = 9 independent samples were used). The interactive version of this plot is located at: https://hubmapconsortium.github.io/vccf-visualization-release/html/violin_cell.htmld Example of skin region with a higher number of immune cells within 100 µm of endothelial cells. Reconstructed 3D distance map for immune cells and nearest endothelial cells. Example shown is for region 4 (superior abdomen, mild sun exposure, male, 48 years of age); histogram plot showing the distribution of immune cells within 50–200 µm, with the highest T killer cell count within 25–50 µm. For interactive visualization in 3D and 2D go to: https://hubmapconsortium.github.io/vccf-visualization-release/html/region_4.html).