It's clearly the heart! Optical transparency, cardiac tissue imaging, and computer modelling

Recent developments in clearing and microscopy enable 3D imaging with cellular resolution up to the whole organ level. These methods have been used extensively in neurobiology, but their uptake in other fields has been much more limited. Application of this approach to the human heart and effective use of the data acquired present challenges of scale and complexity. Four interlinked issues need to be addressed: 1) efficient clearing and labelling of heart tissue, 2) fast microscopic imaging of human-scale samples, 3) handling and processing of multi-terabyte 3D images, and 4) extraction of structural infor-mation in computationally tractable structure-based models of cardiac function. Preliminary studies show that each of these requirements can be achieved with the appropriate application and develop-ment of existing technologies. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Recent developments in clearing and microscopy have enabled 3D imaging of whole organs at cellular resolution, but applying this to the human heart presents challenges in scale and complexity. Efficient clearing and labeling of heart tissue, fast microscopic imaging of human-scale samples, handling large 3D image data, and extracting structural information are key issues to address.