Measurement of Albumin Concentration Gradients within the Glomerular Capillary Wall Based on Active Contour Model

Abstract

The glomerular basement membrane (GBM) of the kidney is the basal lamina layer of the glomerulus. The passage of various endogenous proteins across the GBM has been measured and studied by others. This paper studied a method, based on an active contour model, to measure the protein concentration gradients across the GBM. Glomerular capillary images of living rats were obtained by confocal microscopy. After preprocessing, the active contour model was applied on the scanned images to estimate the location of the GBM. A sampling across the GBM in selected areas was then applied and the result was averaged for future analysis.