If you've ever tried taking a picture of a puppy, you likely ended up with a blur of fur. Now try reading a stock ticker on the puppy's fur, and you'll have the challenge that faces researchers studying electrical conduction of heart muscle.
The living heart contracts and relaxes every second as the heart pumps, but to researchers studying electrical conduction, this essential pumping is a confounding feature that they call"motion artifact." Researchers need to read that stock ticker—that is, the moving fluorescent signals that indicate the electrical functioning of heart cells—but to do so, they typically have to use drugs that stop the cells from beating while they take their measurements.
Results of the research, led by Nathaniel Huebsch, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and Guy Genin, the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering, both in the McKelvey School of Engineering, are published in the"When the heart beats, the electrical signal goes through the tissue, and that triggers mechanical squeezing," said Huebsch, who studies how mechanical cues affect heart development and disease.
The team's algorithm mimics the action of blebbistatin, a drug that inhibits motion of heart muscle but also can negatively impact the underlying structure of these cells. Genin and Huebsch worked with Eliot Elson, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the School of Medicine on the method.
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