Red blood cells stabilize flow in brain microvascular networks
Fig 5
Well-balanced bifurcations are on average only 38 μm apart from any point in tissue.
(A) Microvascular network 1 (MVN 1) and the five analysis layers (ALs) each 200 μm thick (Fig from [12]). (B) Minimum path length between well-balanced bifurcation (wb-bif.) and descending arterioles (DA)/ ascending venules (AV) for MVN 1 (left) and MVN 2 (right). The error bars show the standard error of the mean. The results of the statistical analysis are presented in S7 and S8 Tables. (C) Distribution of the distance from all tissue points to the closest outflow vessel of a well-balanced bifurcation. Upper plot: MVN 1, raw data in (D), Lower plot: MVN 2. (D) Distance for all tissue points to the closest outflow vessel of a well-balanced bifurcation in MVN 1. Distances >100 μm are mostly located at the border. The details to compute the variables shown in (B-D) are presented in the Methods.