Working visit to Max Planck Institute

Michał Hamkało as a member of the prof. Wojtkowski's team took part in a working visit at the Max Planck Institute. The business trip was organized in order to perform the first 3D OCT measurements of a beating rabbit hearts (in Langedorrff perfusion system). All measurements were done together by the team of prof. Wojtkowski and their collaborators from Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Selforganization (dr Jan Christoph, Stephan Luther) in Goettingen and from Institute for Biomedical Optics in Luebeck (T. Pfeiffer, W. Draxonger and prof. Huber).

Team of prof. Wojtkowski has implemented MHz OCT (with the use of MHz FDML laser) system into the optical mapping system for heart measurements. Optical mapping is already a well-known surface-imaging technique, which allows tracking the electrical activity of the heart (during both normal beating and abnormal states) at its surface (and after adding electro-sensitive dye). Due to the fact that this technique allows obtaining 2D images, artifacts connected with heart motions are damaging the quality of tracking. Thanks to the application of the MHz OCT system they have done simultaneous measurements of beating heart in both techniques – 3D OCT (100 vol/s) and 2D optical mapping (200 vol/s). Experiments involved 3 different rabbit hearts and acquiring multiple 5-7 s long 3D image stacks of different heart parts (with rates up to 100 vol/s) together with continuous optical mapping measurements. Two techniques measurements were synchronized with the use of TTL-signal triggering. These joint measurements of the same area of a beating heart have not been done before and acquired data after proper processing and interpretation has the potential to become an important contribution to cardiological sciences.

Visitor

Michał Hamkało

Dates

April 22-28, 2018

Location

Max Planck Institute, Goettingen, Germany