ArticlePLoS computational biology2015
Testing Foundations of Biological Scaling Theory Using Automated Measurements of Vascular Networks.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Blood flow rate and wall shear stress in seven major cephalic arteries of humans.Journal of anatomy · 2020Pooled it
- Da Vinci's mischief: xylem conduits in the stems of woody plants do not furcate.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- Whole organism 3D mapping reveals universal branching topology and biophysical optimization governs vascular and nervous system development.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Information flow drives localized morphological differences across neuronal and glial cell types.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2026Article
- Mapping the arterial vascular network in an intact human kidney using hierarchical phase-contrast tomography.Npj imaging · 2025Article
- Scaling in branch thickness and the fractal aesthetic of trees.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Neuronal branching is increasingly asymmetric near synapses, potentially enabling plasticity while minimizing energy dissipation and conduction time.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Seeing through noise in power laws.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- How axon and dendrite branching are guided by time, energy, and spatial constraints.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Vessel network extraction and analysis of mouse pulmonary vasculature via X-ray micro-computed tomographic imaging.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Branching principles of animal and plant networks identified by combining extensive data, machine learning and modelling.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Coevolution of body size and metabolic rate in vertebrates: a life-history perspective.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2020Article
- Influence of image segmentation on one-dimensional fluid dynamics predictions in the mouse pulmonary arteries.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- Bioprinting Vasculature: Materials, Cells and Emergent Techniques.Materials (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
- Travel in city road networks follows similar transport trade-off principles to neural and plant arbors.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2019Article
- On the thermodynamic origin of metabolic scaling.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- A general model for metabolic scaling in self-similar asymmetric networks.PLoS computational biology · 2017Article
- Do Vascular Networks Branch Optimally or Randomly across Spatial Scales?PLoS computational biology · 2016Article
- Energy and time determine scaling in biological and computer designs.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientists have long sought to understand how vascular networks supply blood and oxygen to cells throughout the body. Recent work focuses on principles that constrain how vessel size changes through branching generations from the aorta to capillaries and uses scaling exponents to quantify these changes. Prominent scaling theories predict that combinations of these exponents explain how metabolic, growth, and other biological rates vary with body size. Nevertheless, direct measurements of individual vessel segments have been limited because existing techniques for measuring vasculature are invasive, time consuming, and technically difficult. We developed software that extracts the length, radius, and connectivity of in vivo vessels from contrast-enhanced 3D Magnetic Resonance Angiography. Using data from 20 human subjects, we calculated scaling exponents by four methods-two derived from local properties of branching junctions and two from whole-network properties. Although these methods are often used interchangeably in the literature, we do not find general agreement between these methods, particularly for vessel lengths. Measurements for length of vessels also diverge from theoretical values, but those for radius show stronger agreement. Our results demonstrate that vascular network models cannot ignore certain complexities of real vascular systems and indicate the need to discover new principles regarding vessel lengths.
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