November 16, 2022

eXCITING: X-ray Cardiac tissue Tomographic ImagiNG

1st Call, iDoc

Short Summary

Cardiovascular diseases, leading cause of death in the world, are responsible of severe alteration of the complex cardiac muscle microstructure. In this PhD project, synchrotron X-ray Phase Contrast micro-tomography imaging (X-PCI) will be used to study the microscopic organization of human cardiac samples coming from healthy and unhealthy hearts. The objective is to develop the necessary tools to get a better understanding of individual cardiac remodelling and propose X-PCI as a complementary investigation technique.

Goals

The aim of our PhD project is to offer the non-destructive time-efficient high-resolution and 3 dimensional capabilities of X-PCI as an improvement of the current diagnosis in human corings or EMBs. Cardiac microstructure will be quantified at micrometre scale in 3D, without sample preparation further to the biopsy extraction nor the use of staining or contrast agents. Different cardiac remodeling processes will be documented, feeding an imaging database to help pathologists in their diagnosis. The potential offered by machine learning will be harnessed to reduce the human intervention in the analysis. Finally, the possibility to translate this technique to clinical imaging facilities will also be investigated.

Significance

Histopathology is the most common method to investigate the tissue microstructure. However, this technique requires time and expertise. A fast and accurate technique would therefore be beneficial to improve diagnosis and move towards more personalized treatment.

Background

In the case of advanced heart failure, the most efficient therapeutic intervention implies heart surgery with either a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implantation or a cardiac transplantation (HTx). In the first case, a “coring” (i.e. removing) of the entire tissue of the apex of the heart in order to place the inflow cannula of the device is needed, thus providing a full thickness specimen of the diseased myocardium. For the regular follow-up of HTx patients (or for diagnosis), the established clinical practice is achieved via endomyocardial biopsies (EMB). The typical analysis procedure is done via histology in order to analyse the microstructure and to evaluate, for instance, the level of fibrosis in the cardiac tissue.

Publications

Dejea H., Garcia-Canadilla P., Cook A., Guasch E., Zamora M., Crispi F., Stampanoni M., Bijnens B. and Bonnin A. “Comprehensive Analysis of Animal Models of Cardiovascular Disease using Multiscale X-Ray Phase Contrast Tomography” Scientific Reports (2019) vol 9, Article number: 6996 doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-43407-z
Dejea H and Bonnin A. Imaging Modalities for Biological and Preclinical Research: A Compendium Volume I Chapter 4a – Hard X-ray Tomographic Microscopy. IOP Publishing ISBN: 9780750330572 (2020)
Dejea H. and Bonnin A., “Hard X-ray tomography ” Imaging Modalities for Biological and Preclinical Research: A Compendium, 2021, doi://10.1088/978-0-7503-3059-6ch22
Dejea H., Bonnin A., Cook A.C. and Garcia-Canadilla P. Cardiac multi-scale investigation of the right and left ventricle ex-vivo: a review.” Cardiovascular Diagnosis And Therapy (2020), 10(5), 1701-1717
Dejea H., Garcia-Canadilla P., Planinc I., Cikes M., Bijnens B., Stampanoni M. and Bonnin A. “Multiscale X-ray Phase Contrast Imaging for Assessing Cardiac Remodelling: towards in-vitro applications”. bMASR 2018
Garcia‐Canadilla P, Nadal A, Bonnin A, et al. VP31.13: SARS‐CoV‐2‐positive placenta shows intervillous space collapse and perivillous fibrinoid deposition Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology : the Official Journal of the International Society of Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology. Oct;58(Suppl 1):229-229 (2021)
Loncaric F, Garcia-Canadilla P, Garcia-Alvarez A, Sanchis L, Prat S, Doltra A, Quintana E, Pereda D, Dejea H, Bonnin A, Sitges M, Bijnens B. “Etiology-Discriminative Multimodal Imaging of Left Ventricular Hypertrophy and Synchrotron-Based Assessment of Microstructural Tissue Remodeling”, Front Cardiovasc Med. 8:670734 (2021) doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2021.670734.
Planinc I., Garcia-Canadilla, P., Dejea H., Ilic I., Guasch E., Zamora M., Crispi F., Stampanoni M., Milicic D., Bijnens B., Bonnin A. and Cikes M. “Comprehensive assessment of myocardial remodeling in ischemic heart disease by synchrotron propagation based X-ray phase contrast imaging”, Sci Rep 11, 14020 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93054-6
Planinc I., Ilic I., Garcia‐Canadilla P., Dejea H., Skoric B., Jurin H., Gasparovic H., Stampanoni M., Milicic D., Bonnin A., Bijnens B. and Cikes C. “X-ray phase contrast imaging of endo-myocardial biopsies following heart transplantation – agreement with classical histology” European Journal of Heart failure – Supplement Article (2020)
Soveral I., Crispi F., Walter C., Guirado L., García‐Cañadilla P., Cook A., Bonnin A., Dejea H., Rovira‐Zurriaga C., Sánchez de Toledo J., Gratacós E., Maria Martínez J., Bijnens B. and Gómez O. “Early cardiac remodeling in aortic coarctation: insights from fetal and neonatal functional and structural assessment” Ultrasound Obstet Gynecol. (2020) https://doi.org/10.1002/uog.21970
Vila-Comamala J., Romano L., Jefimovs K., Dejea H., Bonnin A., Cook A.C., Planinc I., Cikes M., Wang Z. and Stampanoni M., “High sensitivity X-ray phase contrast imaging by laboratory grating-based interferometry at high Talbot order geometry,” Opt. Express 29, 2049-2064 (2021)