Quantified Morphology of the Pig Vagus Nerve with Anti-Fibronectin

Study purpose: To quantify pig vagus nerve perineurium thickness as a function of fascicle diameter

Data collection: We conducted immunofluorescence of 9 cervical and 9 subdiaphragmatic pig vagus nerve cross sections with an antibody against fibronectin, as well as no primary and no primary/no secondary controls at the cervical and subdiaphragmatic levels. We quantified effective nerve diameter, effective fascicle diameters, number of fascicles, and perineurium thickness for 4 cervical and 4 subdiaphragmatic samples. These morphological data provide neural anatomical information, as well as foundational knowledge for computational and preclinical studies of vagus nerve stimulation. The dataset contains nd2 files and TIFFs for 9 left cervical and 9 anterior subdiaphragmatic pig vagus nerve samples, plus 4 control images, as well as TIFFs for the 8 segmented images.

Primary conclusion: None stated

Curator's Notes

Experimental Design: Immunofluorescence (anti-fibronectin) was completed for 9 left cervical and 9 anterior subdiaphragmatic pig vagus nerves samples, as well as controls. Segmentation data for the perineurium and nerves for 4 cervical and 4 subdiaphragmatic samples is included. Using the resulting binary traces, effective fascicle diameters and the perineurium thickness was calculated.

Completeness: This dataset is part of a larger study "Quantified vagus nerve morphology across species".

Subjects & Samples: Adult male (n=3) and female (n=6) domestic pink pigs were used for this study, 10 - 15 weeks old.

Primary vs derivative data: Data in the primary and derivative folders are divided by subject number (listed in subject file), then sample number (listed in sample file). The primary folder contains nd2 and TIFF images of the anti-fibronectin IF micrographs (for all samples), as well as segmentations of this histology (for 8 samples) shown as TIFF images of the binary traces of the fascicles and nerves (loaded and analyzed by Matlab scripts in the "code" folder). The derivative folder contains jp2 versions of the image files as well as xml files for the samples that were segmented; Neurolucida 360 from MBF Bioscience was used to convert the binary traces of segmented images into xml file format to overlay with the anti-fibronectin IF nd2 micrographs and then to convert the images to jp2 extension.

Code Availability: In the "code" folder, Matlab code is used to load the segmented/binary TIFF images, analyze the images, and plot the resulting morphology metrics. The "code" folder also contains the resulting .mat file with the morphology metrics output by the code. Filepaths in the code are set to work as-is, in-place in the dataset.