Key result
A complete and fully operational low-cost optical mapping system was successfully developed and validated for recording high spatiotemporal resolution action potentials, calcium transients, and fibrillation dynamics in isolated pig and rabbit hearts.
Why the study?
High costs limit the widespread use of cardiac optical mapping systems among clinical scientists and students.
The development of a complete, low-cost (<$5,000) optical mapping system successfully captures high-resolution cardiac electrophysiology data in translational animal models, significantly lowering the economic barrier for this research technique.
Low-cost optical mapping system enables translational studies in pig/rabbit hearts; leaves open broader clinical research adoption pending validation.
Clinicians, biologists, physicists, engineers, and computer scientists are coming together to better understand heart disease, which is currently the leading cause of death globally. Optical mapping, a high-speed fluorescence imaging technique that visualizes and measures key cardiac parameters such as action potentials, cytosolic calcium transients, and fibrillation dynamics, is a core research tool that has arisen from such interdisciplinary collaborations. In an effort to broaden its use, especially among clinical scientists and students, we developed a complete and low-cost optical mapping system, including a constant-flow Langendorff perfusion system, which minimizes the economic threshold to widespread use of this powerful tool in cardiac electrophysiology research. The system described here provides high spatiotemporal resolution data about action potentials, intracellular calcium transients and fibrillation wave dynamics in isolated Langendorff-perfused hearts (pigs and rabbits), relevant for translational research. All system components and software elements are fully disclosed with the aim of increasing the use of this affordable and highly versatile tool among clinicians, basic scientists and students wishing to tackle their own research questions with their own customizable systems.
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Marina‐Breysse et al. (2021) studied Cardiac electrophysiology (n=5). Low-cost cardiac optical mapping system was evaluated on System functionality (action potentials, calcium transients, fibrillation dynamics). A complete and fully operational low-cost optical mapping system was successfully developed and validated for recording high spatiotemporal resolution action potentials, calcium transients, and fibrillation dynamics in isolated pig and rabbit hearts.
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