Saturday, April 17, 2010

Heart Strings

Thanks to the wonders of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), amazing images of the muscle fiber orientation of the left ventricle have been obtained:

The image was produced using a branch of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The technique tracks the diffusion of water throughout the myocardium (the heart’s muscular wall comprising interconnected sheets of muscle cells called myocytes). Due to the way the myocytes are organized, the movement of water is restricted, so tracking the location of water molecules can reveal valuable information about the structure of the heart in a non-invasive way.
Nice.

-Wes

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