Figure 1.

An example of quantitative analysis performed in the biliary tree, hepatic artery, and portal vein in both groups of animals is shown for a bile duct segment from normal rats. A segment is defined to be the part of the biliary tree, hepatic artery, or portal vein between two consecutive branching sites, ie, bifurcations. The trace (white dotted line) was performed at the middle of the segment; the round inset shows a part of segment, ie, a subsegment. Cross-sectional area and the length of each subsegment were measured. The segmental cross-sectional area was taken as the arithmetic average of the subsegmental cross-sectional areas. The length of the each segment was calculated by summing the length of the subsegments.