The purpose of this study was to investigate effects of low maternal folic acid (FA) status on many eye structures in embryonic mice using multifractal analysis, a method for describing complex structural patterns. To do this, we used the FracLac plugin for ImageJ to analyse binary digital images of cornea, lens, retina, and vitreous after immunohistochemical analysis using anti-collagen IV or anti-laminin-1 antibodies. The box-counting and gliding box methods were used to generate metrics including the fractal dimension, lacunarity, divergence, and multifractal spectrum distance metrics for each ocular structure. Results were analysed using bootstrap resampling techniques and the Kruskal-Wallis significance test. For all structures and staining methods studied, differences between embryos from control vs FA-deficient females were detectable in lacunarity plots and multifractal spectra, and statistically significant in cornea, lens, retina and vitreous. Multifractal analysis detected even slight differences in tissue textures presumably attributable to altered expression of extracellular matrix molecules.

这项研究的目的是使用多重分形分析方法研究低母体叶酸（FA）状态对胚胎小鼠许多眼结构的影响，该方法是一种描述复杂结构模式的方法。为此，我们使用ImageJ的FracLac插件在使用抗胶原蛋白IV或抗层粘连蛋白1抗体进行免疫组织化学分析后，分析了角膜，晶状体，视网膜和玻璃体的二进制数字图像。盒计数法和滑行盒法用于生成度量，包括每个眼结构的分形维数，色度，散度和多重分形谱距离度量。使用bootstrap重采样技术和Kruskal-Wallis显着性检验来分析结果。对于研究的所有结构和染色方法，在盲点图和多重分形谱中可检测到对照雌性和FA缺陷型雌性胚胎之间的差异，在角膜，晶状体，视网膜和玻璃体中具有统计学意义。多重分形分析检测到组织质地的细微差异，大概归因于细胞外基质分子表达的改变。