title: Second-harmonic generation imaging of collagen fibers in myocardium for atrial fibrillation diagnosis.
abstract: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common irregular heart rhythm and the mortality rate for patients with AF is approximately twice the mortality rate for patients with normal sinus rhythm (NSR). Some research has indicated that myocardial fibrosis plays an important role in predisposing patients to AF. Therefore, realizing the relationship between myocardial collagen fibrosis and AF is significant. Second-harmonic generation (SHG) is an optically nonlinear coherent process to image the collagen network. We perform SHG microscopic imaging of the collagen fibers in the human atrial myocardium. Utilizing the SHG images, we can identify the differences in morphology and the arrangement of collagen fibers between NSR and AF tissues. We also quantify the arrangement of the collagen fibers using Fourier transform images and calculating the values of angle entropy. We indicate that SHG imaging, a nondestructive and reproducible method to analyze the arrangement of collagen fibers, can provide explicit information about the relationship between myocardial fibrosis and AF.
authors.affiliation: National Taiwan University, Graduate Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics and Department of Electrical Engineering, 1 Roosevelt Road Section 4, Taipei, 10617 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ming-Rung
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Tsai
authors.forename: Yu-Wei
authors.initials: YW
authors.lastname: Chiu
authors.forename: Men Tzung
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Lo
authors.forename: Chi-Kuang
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D001281:Atrial Fibrillation / Q000473:pathology*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D024022:Fibrillar Collagens / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D006801:Humans; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D009206:Myocardium / Q000473:pathology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D024022:Fibrillar Collagens