Collaboration:Shriner

Computer Assisted, Self Regulated, Embedded Microscope for in vivo cardiac observation

Members

• Shingo Yasuhara, M.D., Ph.D. (Shriners Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital)
• Nobuhiko Hata, Ph.D. (Brigham and Women's Hospital)
• Junichi Tokuda, Ph.D. (Brigham and Women's Hospital)

Interaction with NA-MIC

This program is support by image processing tools kits available from National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (PI: Kikinis). NA-MIC investigators, in particular Dr. Steve Piper, Ron Kikinis, provides expert consultation on the applicatoin of Slicer and its associated Engineering tools for development.The software developed in this project is available as BSD licensed open source software.

Abstract

Millions of people die each year in the US from heart attacks, arrhythmias, and other cardiac diseases. Despite its potential scientific value, microscopic observation of the beating heart in live animals is still difficult due to the vigorous nature of the cardiac movement. This grant proposal is for a pilot project that will ultimately extend into the construction of a completely new modality of in vivo microscopy that incorporates opto-mechanical feedback regulation and image processing to capture motion-corrected microscopic video images of the heart. Previously, we constructed an ultra-video-rate scanning in vivo confocal microscope (“Antarctica-I”), to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms of skeletal muscle diseases. These studies demonstrated that in vivo microscopy can provide information that was missing from conventional post-mortem histological analyses and thus fill the gap between cell biology approaches and animal experiments.

If one can observe the living heart under the microscope in a similar manner, it will allow detailed microscopic observation of the progress of coronary arteriosclerosis, post-ischemic arrhythmia, and post-infarction remodeling process, among many other potential applications.  It will also improve the feasibility of observing other moving organs including the lung and the gastrointestinal tract in animal studies.  Technology developed in this proposal will also be clinically applied to the construction of a prototype self-regulated endoscopic microscopy, and to the monitoring of patients’ cardiopulmonary microcirculation during surgeries.  

This proposal brings together two research groups with unique strengths in (1) optics, electronics, microscopy and anesthesiology, and in (2) mechanical engineering, image processing, and robotics.