Figure 7.

Quantitative analysis of the tissue thickness. Analysis of the local tissue thickness showing the differences between the volumetric characteristics of control and the idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) tissue biopsy specimens. On average, control lung tissue was composed of finer elements, with an average thickness of 42 μm (approximately 5-pixel sphere diameter at a voxel size of 8.48 μm), compared with much thicker elements for the IPF tissue biopsy specimen, with an average thickness of 127 μm (approximately 15 pixels). Left panel: The histogram depicts the frequency and distribution of all tissue voxels (3D pixels) on the basis of the thickness of the element they belong to. The graph also presents the calculated average (mean) thickness for each specimen (dashed vertical lines), along with the associated SD (solid line whiskers). Right panel: A volume rendering of the thickness map for both specimens. Both color maps are to scale and range from 0 μm (black/blue) to 300 μm (yellow). This view provides a complementary qualitative visualization of the thickness heterogeneity.