Three‐Dimensional Models of Individual Cardiac Histoanatomy: Tools and Challenges

Abstract

There is a need for, and utility in, the acquisition of data sets of cardiac histoanatomy, with the vision of reconstructing individual hearts on the basis of noninvasive imaging, such as MRI, enriched by reference to detailed atlases of serial histology obtained from representative samples. These data sets would be useful not only as a repository of knowledge regarding the specifics of cardiac histoanatomy, but could form the basis for generation of individualized high-resolution cardiac structure-function models. The current article presents a step in this general direction: it illustrates how whole-heart noninvasive imaging can be combined with whole-heart histology in an approach to achieve automated construction of histoanatomically detailed models of cardiac 3D structure and function at hitherto unprecedented resolution and accuracy (based on 26.4 × 26.4 × 24.4 μm MRI voxel size, and enriched by histological detail). It provides an overview of the tools used in this quest and outlines challenges posed by the approach in the light of applications that may benefit from the availability of such data and tools.

An Iterative Method for Registration of High-Resolution Cardiac Histoanatomical and Mri Images

“…Increasing concentrations of alcohol were used to dehydrate the heart before embedding in wax. [1]. Up to this point, intervening deformation sources T 1 to T 3 are all three-dimensional and non-rigid.…”

“…Preliminary work by our group [1] discussed the development of computational models of individual hearts using histology and MRI at unprecedented resolution. An optical flow method was employed to perform inter-slice registration of histology images.…”

Modeling Defibrillation

“…In the past decade or so, efforts have been focused towards developing techniques to construct 3D computational cardiac models directly from non-invasive 3D imaging modalities such as magnetic resonance (MR). In the last few years, the advent of stronger magnets and refined scanning protocols has significantly increased the resolution of anatomical MR scans, such that small mammalian hearts now can have MR voxel dimensions of ≈ 20 − 25 µm (Burton et al, 2006;Plank et al, 2009). An example of a high resolution anatomical MR scan of a rabbit heart with voxel resolution ≈ 25 µm isotropic is shown in Fig.…”

High Performance Computer Simulations of Cardiac Electrical Function Based on High Resolution MRI Datasets

“…Images of coronary perfusion-fixed rabbit hearts, embedded in agarose, were acquired with an in-plane resolution of 26.4 μm x 26.4 μm, and an out-of-plane resolution of 24.4 μm. All the methodological details were described previously in [5].…”