Computational placental pathology: using placental geometry to assess placental function

Placental pathologists diagnose disease based on examining the placenta. It is hypothesized that poor blood vessel coverage may be detrimental to fetal development and may lead to low birth weight. In this project, geometrical measures of the placental structure are computed based on the total area of vessels and the vessel coverage on an important part of the placenta known as the chorionic plate. Vessel coverage is measured by the average of the distance from every point on the chorionic plate of the placenta to the closest vessel. The distance is computed using the fast sweeping method for the eikonal equation. These measures are studied for correlation with birth weight. Additionally, various image processing techniques are investigated for use on digital placental images.