Optical assessment of the cardiac rhythm of contracting cardiomyocytes in vitro and a pulsating heart in vivo for pharmacological screening
Journal
Biomedical Optics Express
Journal Volume
5
Journal Issue
5
Pages
1616-1625
Date Issued
2014
Author(s)
Abstract
Our quest in the pathogenesis and therapies targeting human heart diseases requires assessment of the contractile dynamics of cardiac models of varied complexity, such as isolated cardiomyocytes and the heart of a model animal. It is hence beneficial to have an integral means that can interrogate both cardiomyocytes in vitro and a heart in vivo. Herein we report an application of dual-beam optical reflectometry to determine noninvasively the rhythm of two representative cardiac models-chick embryonic cardiomyocytes and the heart of zebrafish. We probed selfbeating cardiomyocytes and revealed the temporally varying contractile frequency with a short-time Fourier transform. Our unique dual-beam setup uniquely records the atrial and ventricular pulsations of zebrafish simultaneously. To minimize the cross talk between signals associated with atrial and ventricular chambers, we particularly modulated the two probe beams at distinct frequencies and extracted the signals specific to individual cardiac chambers with phase-sensitive detection. With this setup, we determined the atrio-ventricular interval, a parameter that is manifested by the electrical conduction from the atrium to the ventricle. To demonstrate pharmacological applications, we characterized zebrafish treated with various cardioactive and cardiotoxic drugs, and identified abnormal cardiac rhythms and atrioventricular (AV) blocks of varied degree. In light of its potential capability to assess cardiac models both in vitro and in vivo and to screen drugs with cardioactivity or toxicity, we expect this approach to have broad applications ranging from cardiopharmacology to developmental biology. ?2014 Optical Society of America.
SDGs
Other Subjects
Biology; Broad application; Cardiac chambers; Developmental biology; Electrical conduction; Optical reflectometry; Phase-sensitive detection; Potential capability; Short time Fourier transforms; Heart; adrenalin; digoxin; esmolol; isoflurane; tricaine; animal cell; animal tissue; article; atrioventricular block; atrioventricular conduction; chick embryo; dual beam optical reflectometry; heart fibrillation; heart muscle cell; heart rate; heart rhythm; heart ventricle tachycardia; histogram; model; nonhuman; reflectometry; zebra fish
Type
journal article