Idiopathic ventricular arrhythmias can originate from either the endocardial, midmyocardial, or epicardial regions of the heart. The outflow tracts and basal regions of the ventricle tend to be common locations of origin of these tachycardias. The anatomy of this region of the heart is both fascinating and, at times, challenging from a procedural standpoint. The orientation of the outflow tract...

A parametric model of the complex time-dependent geometry of the ventricles of the human heart is constructed. The geometry model is created by means of a boundary value approach, solving an elliptic partial differential equation to generate a representation of the inner surface of the ventricles. The technique provides a closed-form description of the geometry with the advantage that the geome...

Ventricular septal defect (VSD) is the persistence of one or more holes in the septum that separates the left and right ventricles of the heart. The ventricles are a single chamber at about four weeks of gestation but by eight weeks it has been divided into two. Failure of development of any part of the septum results in a defect. It may vary considerably in terms of size and haemodynamic conse...

In this paper we present a novel method for the segmentation of scintigraphic images in order to detect the two ventricles of the heart. The method is based on the active contour model using a region based approach and parametric representation of the contour. The novel aspect of the method is that we have integrated separating forces between the two ventricles in the active contour model. The ...

Despite the numerous investigations into the blood supply of the ventricles of the human heart, little attention has been paid to the finer details of the vascular pattern of the arteries of the interventricular septum. In view of the importance of the effects of any deficiency in the blood supply to the septum, a comparison was made of the normal and diseased vascular patterns seen in the inte...

The Doppler tracing is a sensitive method for depicting movement of the heart wall, valves, and blood flow. This communication reports the authors' experience with the Doppler method in normal persons and patients with various cardiac arrhythmias. Three main components are recognized in the Doppler tracing: the presystolic component, a; component v, due to systolic movement of the ventricles; a...

An incomplete septation of the ventricles in the vertebrate heart that disturbes the strict separation between the contents of the two ventricles is termed a ventricular septal defect (VSD). Together with bicuspid aortic valves, it is the most frequent congenital heart disease in humans. Until now, life-threatening VSDs are usually treated surgically. To avoid surgery and to develop an alternat...

Junctin is a 26-kDa integral membrane protein, colocalized with the ryanodine receptor (RyR) and calsequestrin at the junctional sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) membrane in cardiac and skeletal muscles. To elucidate the functional role of junctin in heart, transgenic (TG) mice overexpressing canine junctin (24-29 folds) under the control of mouse a-myosin heavy chain promoter were generated. Overex...

Many heart anatomy models have been developed to study the electrophysiological properties of the human heart. However, none of them includes the geometry of the whole human heart. In this study, an anatomically detailed mathematical model of the human heart was firstly reconstructed from the computed tomography images. In the reconstructed model, the atria consisted of atrial muscles, sinoatri...

The heart is heavily innervated with sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve fibers. Although both receptor types are present in the atria and ventricles, the cholinergic receptors are located mainly in the atria and the adrenergic receptors in the ventricles. The distribution of these receptors in the ventricles is not homogenous but follows apex-to-base and epicardium-to-endocardium gradients. ...