Imaging study demonstrates non-destructive whole-organ microCT quantification of equine placental vasculature and morphology, indicating broader utility across large mammalian species.
Placental structure is linked to function across morphological scales. In the placenta, changes to gross anatomy, such as surface area, volume, or blood vessel arrangement, are associated with suboptimal physiological outcomes. However, quantifying each of these metrics requires different laborious semi-quantitative methods. Here, we demonstrate how, with minimal sample preparation, whole-organ computed microtomography (microCT) can be used to calculate gross morphometry of the equine placenta and a range of additional metrics, including branching morphometry of placental vasculature, non-destructively from a single dataset. Our approach can be applied to quantify the gross structure of any large mammalian placenta.
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Laundon et al. (2024) studied this question.
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