THE world's first atlas of the human heart can take you inside the organ just like Google Earth, scientists say. Astonishing technology allows viewers to look at one healthy and one diseased heart in "unprecedented detail". Experts hope the technology will be "invaluable" in helping them better understand cardiovascular disease and "accelerate" medicine in the field.
Professor Peter Lee, senior author of the study from University College London (UCL) Mechanical Engineering, said: "The atlas that we’ve created in this study is like having Google Earth for the human heart. "It allows us to view the whole organ at global scale, then zoom in to street level to look at cardiovascular features in unprecedented detail. "Being able to image whole organs like this reveals details and connections that were previously unknown.
" The study, published in the journal Radiology, provides a map of the human heart that captures the anatomical structure of the whole organ down to 20 micrometres – half the width of a human hair. In certain areas, imaging has been done to cellular level. It provides a 3D look inside two whole adult human hearts - one healthy and one diseased.
The team hope it will "facilitate previously impossible research into both healthy and diseased hearts". By "clarifying anatomical structures and connections", they could improve treatment options for arrhythmia - an abnormality of the heart's rhythm - and create more lifelike models for surgical training, they added. Pr.