Cardiologie clinique et expérimentale
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A Non-Contact Method to Assess Contractility on the Langendorff’s Model Based on CCD Imaging

Constantinos Grivas*, George Panayiotakis, Dimitrios Dougenis, Eleftherios Koumas and Constantinos Anagnostopoulos

Cardiac performance measurements of the isolated beating heart are essential for the evaluation of new pharmaceutical heart treatments. In the small animal, the means for these measurements usually are direct pressure changes in the left ventricle. Although volume equations are also used, they usually are indirect correlates of the pressure changes as opposed to true anatomical or dimensional measurements. In order to acquire detailed cardiac physiological data echocardiographic studies have been used in alive small animals. However, these are experimental techniques that demand a high level of expertise and expensive equipment.
A new easy to use and fast charge-coupled device (CCD) analysis tool has been developed by our team for the isolated beating heart, based on morphometric changes of the projected heart‘s surface. It uses a commercially available fast CCD camera technology, home-made software and an image acquisition-analysis method to extract true dimensional changes. Its significance relies on acquisition and assessment of the cardiac anatomical parameters, using non-contact methods.
A high definition CCD camera is used to acquire images from the isolated beating heart. Subsequently, image analysis software is used to eliminate noise and provide morphometric data (heart chamber dimensional changes) which are transformed to myocardial contractility indices and heart rate measurements.
In conclusion, the new method presented in this paper is contactless, unbiased, cost effective, simple and can be used to evaluate the cardiac function in an ex vivo working model.