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A High-Res 3D Video of the Embryonic Heartbeat

Posted by timothy on from the cool-imaging-tech dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Houston, TX, adapted an imaging technique called optical coherence tomography to capture 3D video of the mammalian heart as it forms. They used the method to image a mouse embryo just 8.5 days past conception and about a day after it starts to form. In the remarkable video a normal heartbeat is visible. Normally optical coherence tomography is used for clinical imaging of the retina. Having such a high-resolution, non-invasive way to image the developing heart could perhaps help doctors treat congenital heart disorders in human babies."

2 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. That's VERY impressive. by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You can get arbitrarily good images of fixed (dead) embryos, but live imaging using any method is damn tough, and live 3D imaging at this resolution is, as far as I know, unprecedented. Motion makes it nearly impossible to do MR or CT 3D imaging. You can gate against the cardiac cycle to image a single animal, but nobody can yet gate against a fetal heartbeat in a mouse. I'm not even sure if that would be enough, because the maternal heartbeat contributes significant motion, too.

    One of our doctoral students did a 3D atlas of the embryonic mouse using MR microscopy. These were fixed specimens, but they're isotropic (the same spatial resolution in all three dimensions), and nobody's come close to matching our resolution as far as I know. Part of her work was looking at cardiac septal defects, which you pretty much have to study in embryos, because they aren't compatible with live birth.

    One drawback of OCT is that it fails if you have to go through much tissue. Mice are tiny enough to make this work possible, but I don't think there's any way you could do it in humans, short of inserting a source/detector into the uterus, which kind of spoils the whole "non-invasive" feature.

  2. Re:Cool tech. by amilo100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A fetus is nothing special. Because a human is nothing special. It is very arrogant to think that we're oh-so-special. We're not. Life in itself is nothing special.

    I see human life as special. This may be because I am human and therefore extremely subjective.

    I am sure that when an alien race lands on earth they will be a lot more objective than us.