Virtual blebbistatin: A robust and rapid software approach to motion artifact removal in optical mapping of cardiomyocytes.

ABSTRACT: Fluorescent reporters of cardiac electrophysiology provide valuable information on heart cell and tissue function. However, motion artifacts caused by cardiac muscle contraction interfere with accurate measurement of fluorescence signals. Although drugs such as blebbistatin can be applied to stop cardiac tissue from contracting by uncoupling calcium-contraction, their usage prevents the study of excitation-contraction coupling and, as we show, impacts cellular structure. We therefore developed a robust method to remove motion computationally from images of contracting cardiac muscle and to map fluorescent reporters of cardiac electrophysiological activity onto images of undeformed tissue. When validated on cardiomyocytes derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), in both mo

SUBMITTER: Woodhams LG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10515162 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature