Myocardial fibrosis, a common sequela of cardiac hypertrophy, has been shown to be associated with arrhythmias in experimental models. Some research has indicated that myocardial fibrosis plays an important role in predisposing patients to atrial fibrillation. Second harmonic generation (SHG) is an optically nonlinear coherent process to image the collagen network. In this presentation, we observe the SHG images of the collagen matrix in atrial myocardium and we analyzed of collagen fibers arrangement by using Fourier-transform analysis. Moreover, comparing the SHG images of the collagen fibers in atrial myocardium between normal sinus rhythm (NSR) and atrial fibrillation (AF), our result indicated that it is possible to realize the relation between myocardial fibrosis and AF.

Date Published: 23 February 2009
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 7161, Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics V, 71612O (23 February 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.809950

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7161:
Photonic Therapeutics and Diagnostics V
Henry Hirschberg M.D.; Brian Jet-Fei Wong M.D.; Kenton W. Gregory M.D.; Reza S. Malek; Nikiforos Kollias; Bernard Choi; Guillermo J. Tearney; Justus F. R. Ilgner; Steen J. Madsen; Laura Marcu; Haishan Zeng, Editor(s)