Methods from the Theory of Random Heterogeneous Media for Quantifying Myocardial Morphology in Normal and Dilated Hearts

Autor(en)

Rudolf Karch, Friederike Neumann, Robert Ullrich, Georg Heinze, Josef Neumüller, Bruno K. Podesser, Martin Neumann

Abstrakt

In the present study, descriptors from the theory of random heterogeneous media were used to characterize the morphology of the myocardial interstitial space in histological sections from hearts of healthy subjects and of patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). Histological sections from resected DCM hearts (n = 9) were compared with donor hearts showing no signs of cardiac disease (n = 6). From control to DCM, the area fraction dot(1) of the interstitial space increased from 0.13 ± 0.05 to 0.27 ± 0.08, the chord-length z from 1.67 ± 0.61 to 5.56 ± 1.78 µm, the pore-size delta from 0.72 ± 0.13 to 1.73 ± 0.40 µm, the distance r min of the first local minimum in the two-point correlation function from 10.99 ± 1.09 to 18.57 ± 4.36 µm, whereas specific interface length s and decay-rate gamma of the lineal-path function decreased from 0.20 ± 0.07 to 0.16 ± 0.04 µm-1 and from 0.39 ± 0.09 to 0.16 ± 0.05 µm-1, respectively. All descriptors (except for s) were significantly different (p <0.05) between control and DCM, reflecting an increasingly heterogeneous morphology in DCM hearts. Our results suggest that (1) descriptors originally developed to characterize the morphology of random heterogeneous media are well suited for histomorphometry of DCM, and (2) among the descriptors studied, either pore-size delta or chord-length z qualify best to discriminate between control and DCM hearts.

Organisation(en)

Computergestützte Physik und Physik der Weichen Materie

Externe Organisation(en)

Medizinische Universität Wien

Journal

Annals of Biomedical Engineering

Band

38

Seiten

308-318

Anzahl der Seiten

11

ISSN

0090-6964

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-009-9848-1

Publikationsdatum

2010

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

1030 Physik, Astronomie

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/fa00b597-7a07-40f1-9e6e-d65a5afcaea2