High resolution extraction of local human cardiac fibre orientations

Abstract

Diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DTMRI) is usually used to detect the displacement distribution of water molecules in biological structure. However, in post-mortem heart fibre imaging, the low spatial resolution does not allow investigating the cardiac fibre structure at microscopic scale. In this paper, the myocyte arrangement of a human heart is investigated at a high resolution of 3.5 μm using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF). The orientation of the myocytes is then computed and extracted at various depths of the heart sample with a multi-scale approach. The helix arrangement of the fibre is obtained at a higher resolution compared to DTMRI. The results show that the measured elevation angles are in good agreement with knowledge of cardiac muscle anatomy. Such high-resolution cardiac fibre orientation information can be used to validate DTMRI measurements and analyze the evolution of cardiac fibre orientations from microscopic level to macroscopic one. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.