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Updated: Aug 31, 2025
Author Spotlight: Advancing Human Cardiac Anatomy Through Multi-Scale Analysis of Hearts
Published on: June 28, 2024
Three-dimensional visualization of heart-wide myocardial architecture and vascular network simultaneously at
Jianwei Chen1,2, Guangcai Liu1, Wen Sun1
1Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, MoE Key Laboratory for Biomedical Photonics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
Insights
Researchers developed a new pipeline for high-resolution cardiac imaging, enabling detailed visualization of heart structures at the single-cell level. This advanced method aids in understanding cardiac morphology and vascular networks.
Area of Science:
- Cardiovascular Biology
- Biomedical Imaging
- Cellular and Molecular Medicine
Background:
- Detailed structural analysis of the entire mature heart at single-cell resolution is crucial for cardiac research.
- Existing methodologies are insufficient for comprehensive whole-heart imaging at this resolution.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce an effective pipeline for labeling and imaging myocardial and vascular structures within the heart.
- To enable high-resolution, heart-wide tissue imaging for detailed cardiac studies.
Main Methods:
- A novel pipeline combining fluorescent dyes for myocardium counterstaining and transgenic markers for cardiovasculature labeling.
- Utilization of high-definition dual-color fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography for whole-heart imaging.
- Achieved a voxel resolution of 0.32 × 0.32 × 1 μm³ for precise structural data acquisition.
Main Results:
- Demonstrated the pipeline's superiority in obtaining comprehensive cardiac structural data.
- Revealed the three-dimensional morphology and spatial arrangement of cardiomyocytes.
- Provided high-resolution vascular data, differentiating endothelial cells and complex capillary networks.
Conclusions:
- The developed pipeline offers a powerful tool for examining entire heart structures at the single-cell level.
- Facilitates deeper understanding of cardiac anatomy and microvasculature in cardiac research.
Abstract:
Obtaining various structures of the entire mature heart at single-cell resolution is highly desired in cardiac studies; however, effective methodologies are still lacking. Here, we propose a pipeline for labeling and imaging myocardial and vascular structures. In this pipeline, the myocardium is counterstained using fluorescent dyes and the cardiovasculature is labeled using transgenic markers. High-definition dual-color fluorescence micro-optical sectioning tomography is used to perform heart-wide tissue imaging, enabling the acquisition of whole-heart data at a voxel resolution of 0.32 × 0.32 × 1 μm3. Obtained structural data demonstrated the superiority of the pipeline. In particular, the three-dimensional morphology and spatial arrangement of reconstructed cardiomyocytes were revealed, and high-resolution vascular data helped determine differences in the features of endothelial cells and complex coiled capillaries. Our pipeline can be used in cardiac studies for examining the structures of the entire heart at the single-cell level.
