BNMC Seminar:  Follow this Beat: Dynamic Imaging and Analysis of the Developing Embryonic Heart

Michael Liebling
Postdoctoral Scholar
Biological Imaging Center, Beckman Institute
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~liebling/

Studying the influence on embryonic development of fast biomechanical processes, such as those induced by blood flow in the embryonic heart, requires the ability to acquire dynamic, three-dimensional data with high temporal and spatial resolution.  We devised novel strategies for collecting and synchronizing cyclic image sequences to build volumes over the entire depth of the beating embryonic zebrafish heart.  Our data analysis and reduction protocols allow for the systematic extraction of quantitative information to describe phenotype and function.  We have used this approach to characterize blood flow and heart efficiency by imaging fluorescent protein-expressing blood and cardiac cells as the heart develops from a tube to a multichambered organ.  These (partly wavelet-based) methods are sufficiently robust to image tissues within the heart at cellular resolution over a wide range of ages and are generalizable to imaging and analyzing other fast moving structures at microscopic scales.  This is joint work with Arian S. Forouhar, Mory Gharib, Mary E. Dickinson, and Scott E. Fraser.