Working visit to Institute for Biomedical Imaging at University of Lubeck

This visit was scheduled in cooperation with one of the best group in the field of ultrafast Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) – prof. Huber group from Lubeck. The purpose  of the visit was to obtain results from ultrafast (up to 100 vol./s) OCT on rabbit and mice hearts. In order to do that, we have made a cooperation with Max Planck for Dynamics and Self-Organization from Goettingen, which gave us a support from biological point of view (also provided with well-prepared hearts).

During the trip, both mice and rabbits hearts were measured with different rates (volumes per second) and obtained results were first of this kind (with such speed) performed on hearts (Fig.1). Based on the results we are able to estimate penetration depth, resolution and all possible configuration of many setting of the OCT experimental setup. On top of that, we have artificially moved hearts in order to simulate normal heart beating. Collected results from such experiments will be used to create proper tracking software (necessary for further studies). Thanks to these measurements, we can make the next step – prepare experiments with use of ultrafast OCT for measuring heart beating in the Langedorff perfusion chamber. In such configuration heart is extracted from animal and can sustain living state for a few hours. Then arrhythmias and heart improper functioning is induced by application of proper medicine. Volumetric scanning of heart beatining in such conditions will deliver new information about origin of heart diseases, which is ultimate goal of our research cooperation.

Visitor

Michał Hamkało

Dates

December 13-16, 2017

Location

Institute for Biomedical Imaging, University of Lubeck