A leading cause of death and decrease in the quality of life in the USA is myocardial infarction (MI). Molecular and genetic analyses have revealed a plethora of information about critical processes involved with MI. However, there is a lack of accompanying information about cardiac tissue biomechanical properties, which may provide additional critical information to understand the tissue remodeling process after MI. In this work, we utilize two complementary noncontact optical coherence elastography (OCE) techniques to assess the changes in mouse cardiac tissue biomechanical properties 6 weeks after the MI was induced. A focused micro air-pulse induced localized displacements, which were detected by a phase-sensitive OCE (PhS-OCE) system. The localized tissue displacement was modeled by a spring-mass damper model to quantify the tissue stiffness. Additionally, the propagation of an air-pulse induced elastic wave was measured at various meridional angles as a complementary measurement of tissue stiffness and anisotropy. The damping results show that the MI caused a decrease in the stiffness of the cardiac tissue. Similarly, the analysis of elastic wave propagation showed that the cardiac tissue became softer and more isotropic after MI. These results show that OCE can detect the changes in cardiac tissue biomechanical properties after MI. OCE may also be useful for developing targeted therapies by identifying regions of cardiac tissue affected by MI.
Myocardial infarction (MI) is a leading cause of death and decrease of quality of life in the USA. An immense amount of research and development has been focused on the molecular mechanisms associated with MI, which have led to numerous therapies for treating and repairing cardiac tissue after MI. However, there is a relative lack of information about the changes in cardiac tissue biomechanical properties due to MI. Therefore, there is a direct need for techniques that can measure cardiac tissue biomechanical properties, which would help further develop our understanding of tissue biomechanical dynamics associated with MI as well as aid in the development of therapies that consider biomechanical properties. In this work we utilize noncontact dynamic optical coherence elastography (OCE) to evaluate the changes in cardiac biomechanical properties 6 weeks after MI in a mouse model. We performed complementary analysis based on elastic wave propagation and damping analyses. Our results show that the left ventricle cardiac tissue became more isotropic and softer after 6 weeks in the MI-affected mice as compared to the sham mice based on the elastic wave propagation measurements. The damping measurements also showed that the MI-affected mice had softer left ventricles as compared to the sham mice. Moreover, the damping analysis was able to localize the boundary of the MI-damaged region. These results show that OCE can be a powerful tool for understanding the dynamics in biomechanical changes in murine cardiac tissue and could potentially reveal diseased areas for targeted therapies.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.