Prior Funding

At early stages of some diseases, healthy cardiac muscle is progressively replaced by fat or scar tissue. Early detection of this process will help to identify patients at risk of sudden cardiac death and may serve as an indication for therapy for the treatment of abnormal electrical rhythms of the heart, arrhythmias. Early detection requires cellular level imaging, which is approximately 100 x 10 μm. Cardiac arrhythmias afflict millions of patients in the United States, where standard methods to treat cardiac arrhythmias include radiofrequency ablation therapy, which is guided by one or two-dimensional electrical measurements to determine where to deliver treatment. A better understanding how the microstructure of the cardiac muscle influences electrical conduction will greatly inform these therapeutic procedures. My goal is to develop high-resolution optical imaging technologies that can correlate tissue microstructure to electrical function, for improved guidance of radiofrequency ablation therapy. I aim to show that high-resolution imaging provided by optical coherence tomography can provide tissue characterization and information regarding the orientation and disarray of muscle cells, which will allow for patient specific models of electrical conduction.