Regular and alternant spiral waves of contractile motion on rat ventricle cell cultures

An imaging system based on the concept of visualizing macroscopic cardiac waves by detecting minute contractile motions of the cells, was developed, for the analysis of spiral waves on the ventricle. This imaging system was based on the principle of propagation-induced phase-contrast imaging. The proposed system used a pair of lens to get a macroscopic field of view and a partially coherent white light source for achieving phase imaging. Images taken with this macro-optics contained convoluted phase information of the sample tissue and provided useful information regarding the coordinated motions of cardiac cells in culture.