Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 793291, 6 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/793291
Research Article

The Use of Fractal Dimension Analysis in Estimation of Blood Vessels Shape in Transplantable Mammary Adenocarcinoma in Wistar Rats after Photodynamic Therapy Combined with Cysteine Protease Inhibitors

Kamil Jurczyszyn,1 Beata J. Osiecka,2 and Piotr Ziółkowski2

1Department of Dental Surgery, Wroclaw Medical University, Krakowska 26, 50-425 Wroclaw, Poland
2Department of Pathomorphology, Wroclaw Medical University, Marcinkowskiego 1, 50-368 Wrocław, Poland

Received 26 June 2012; Accepted 1 August 2012

Academic Editor: Facundo Ballester

Copyright © 2012 Kamil Jurczyszyn et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Fractal dimension analysis (FDA) is modern mathematical method widely used to describing of complex and chaotic shapes when classic methods fail. The main aim of this study was evaluating the influence of photodynamic therapy (PDT) with cystein proteases inhibitors (CPI) on the number and morphology of blood vessels inside tumor and on increase of effectiveness of combined therapy in contrast to PDT and CPI used separately. Animals were divided into four groups: control, treated using only PDT, treated using only CPI and treated using combined therapy, PDT and CPI. Results showed that time of animal survival and depth of necrosis inside tumor were significantly higher in CPI+PDT group in contrast to other groups. The higher value of fractal dimension (FD) was observed in control group, while the lowest value was found in the group which was treated by cystein protease inhibitors. The differences between FD were observed in CPI group and PDT+CPI group in comparison to control group. Our results revealed that fractal dimension analysis is a very useful tool in estimating differences between irregular shapes like blood vessels in PDT treated tumors. Thus, the implementation of FDA algorithms could be useful method in evaluating the efficacy of PDT.