Using a notion of distance between indecomposable modules we deduce new characterizations of laura algebras and quasi-directed Auslander-Reiten components. Afterwards, we investigate the infinite radical of Artin algebras and show that there exist infinitely many non-directing modules between two indecomposable modules X and Y if $ra{d}_A^{\infty }(X,Y)\ne 0$. We draw as inference that a convex component is quasi-directed if and only if it is almost directed.

We define a notion of left section in an Auslander-Reiten component, by weakening one of the axioms for sections. We derive a generalisation of the Liu-Skowroński criterion for tilted algebras, then apply our results to describe the Auslander-Reiten components lying in the left part of an artin algebra.