We reported the surface views of vascular smooth muscle cells and pericytes of modiolar vessels using the trypsin-HCl method in a previous paper. However, as the trypsin-HCl method more or less deforms the angioarchitecture, the conbined method of resin-injection and HCl treatment was applied in the present paper. This method allowed us to not only make clear the relationship between capillary network and spiral ganglion cells but also visualize the wall cytoarchitecture of the inner ear vessels with their characteristic anqioarchitecture intact.
The tunica media of the common cochlear artery is composed of long smooth muscle cells thickly arranged in circular fashion. The arrangement of smooth muscle cells of the anterior vestibular artery, the posterior vestibular artery, the spiral modiolar artery and its first branch is almost the same in all of these structures, but the length of the cells decreases as the diameter of the arteries decreases.