Variability of the Human Cardiac Laminar Structure

The cardiac fiber architecture has an important role in electrophysiology, in mechanical functions of the heart, and in remodeling processes. The variability of the fibers is the focus of various studies in different species. However, the variability of the laminar sheets is still not well known especially in humans. In this paper, we present preliminary results on a quantitative study on the variability of the human cardiac laminar structure. We show that the laminar structure has a complex variability and we show the possible presence of two populations of laminar sheets. Bimodal distributions of the intersection angle of the third eigenvector of the diffusion tensor have been observed in 10 ex vivo healthy human hearts. Additional hearts will complete the study and further characterize the different populations of cardiac laminar sheets.