Figure 1.

Traumatic brain injury results in vascular loss. The top three rows display representative axial images from wide field epifluorescent vessel painting, classical vascular analysis (AngioTool), and fractal analysis (FracLac) maps. The bottom two rows illustrate coronal images of vessel painted brain tissue and complimentary susceptibility weighted magnetic resonance imaging (SWI MRI) to monitor the extent of extravascular bleeding. Each column is representative for naïve, sham, and TBI brains. The images from the naïve animal demonstrate a diffuse and uniform pattern of vessels without vascular disruptions. The sham animal exhibits slight vascular alterations due to the craniotomy. In contrast, the TBI animal has a clear and overt a region of vessel disruption at the site of injury on both the axial and coronal vessel painted microscopic images. These disruptions to the vascular system after TBI are also visible on the classical vascular analysis maps and on the fractal analysis images.