Cutting-edge, whole-heart imaging provides new details on heart defects


Date:
October 20, 2020
Source:
eLife
Summary:
A cutting-edge technique that allows scientists to zoom into tiny
details in a 3D image of a whole animal heart may lead to new
insights on congenital heart disease.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A cutting-edge technique that allows scientists to zoom into tiny
details in a 3D image of a whole animal heart may lead to new insights
on congenital heart disease.


========================================================================== Surgery and other interventions can help repair structural heart defects
in many of the 1% of infants born with congenital heart disease. But
10-25% of these children still do not survive their first year and 44%
do not survive to age 18. The new technique, originally described in a
paper posted on bioRxiv* and now published in eLife, reveals defects
in cells and the components within them found in hearts affected by
congenital heart disease. This may lead to treatments to correct these
defects and further improve survival.

When pumping blood, the chambers of the heart fill up and then contract
to push the blood back out into circulation. To efficiently contract,
the heart cells and tiny muscle fibers inside them must be precisely
organised.

"When the heart is diseased or has defects, this organisation can be lost
or partially lost, and the heart may no longer pump blood efficiently,
leading to complications and even death," explains lead author Graham
Rykiel, MS, a biomedical engineer who conducted the study as a graduate
student in a research team led by senior author Sandra Rugonyi at Oregon
Health & Science University (OHSU), Portland, Oregon, US.

By combining two imaging techniques, 3D microcomputed tomography and
3D scanning electron microscopy, the OHSU team was able to create high-resolution, 3D images of the whole heart of a chicken embryo, and
zoom in to study the organisation within the heart cells. They then used
this tool to examine the differences in cells and the structures within
them between a healthy, normal developing chicken heart and one with a
defect called tetralogy of Fallot, a relatively common form of congenital
heart disease in humans. This revealed structural differences between
cellular components within the healthy chicken heart and the heart with
the defect.

"Our imaging technology will allow us to study exactly what happens within
the heart and its cells when the heart has a defect or is diseased,"
Rykiel says.

"This knowledge will give us clues to design better treatments for
patients with heart defects and other anomalies." The technique will
be useful for studying normal heart development in chickens and other
animals, and how factors such as drugs or environmental differences might influence congenital heart disease -- a focus of Rugonyi's group for over
15 years. This in turn may help explain how tiny structural differences
in the heart cells can cause heart problems or heart failure in people
with congenital heart disease even after a successful surgery.

"By using our imaging technology on chicks with heart defects, we can
start to understand how hearts from human babies with similar defects
differ from normal hearts and what needs to be done beyond surgery to
repair them and avoid their failure," concludes senior author Sandra
Rugonyi, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at OHSU.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by eLife. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Graham Rykiel, Claudia S Lo'pez, Jessica L Riesterer, Ian Fries,
Sanika
Deosthali, Katherine Courchaine, Alina Maloyan, Kent Thornburg,
Sandra Rugonyi. Multiscale cardiac imaging spanning the whole
heart and its internal cellular architecture in a small animal
model. eLife, 2020; 9 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.58138 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201020131359.htm

--- up 8 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, 50 minutes
* Origin: -=> Castle Rock BBS <=- Now Husky HPT Powered! (1337:3/111)