Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Simulated RBC velocity and cell flux in the primitive vasculature of developing mouse retina. (a) A vascular plexus of postnatal day 5 (P5) mouse retina, with vessel lumen and collagen matrix sleeves labelled by ICAM2 (light green) and Col.IV (dark red), respectively. The insets show four regions of interest (ROI-1, ROI-2, ROI-3 and ROI-4) selected from the remodelling region of the plexus. The red line indicates the transitional border between the sprouting and remodelling regions as estimated by [40]. (b) Network diameter histogram showing the total length covered by vessel segments of given diameters. (c) Simulated RBC velocities and (e) RBC fluxes measured in vessel segments from all ROIs. The shaded areas in (c,e) highlight data from capillary vessels within diameter between 3 and 7 μm. (d,f) Comparison of simulated RBC velocities and fluxes against recent in vivo measurements by [41,42] from adult mouse retinal capillaries with the same diameter range (two-sided Mann–Whitney U test).