Morten Smerup
Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark
Title: Structure-function relationship in myocardial sub-structures
Biography
Biography: Morten Smerup
Abstract
From an anatomical point of view the individual myocytes making up left ventricular walls are organized as an anisotropic three-dimensional mesh. This can be characterized in terms of the myocyte angulation relative to the overall geometry of the heart, i.e. helical angles, transmural angles and transverse angles, but also in terms of the organization of the myocytes and the connective tissue of the heart into superstructures, the myocyte aggregates (also called myocardial sheets or –lamellae), which can be further characterized according to their relation to the overall geometry. From a functional point of view, the deformation of the cardiac walls has been extensively described using strain theory on local cuboids of myocardium, characterizing the so-called principal and shear strains. However only lately there has been a satisfactory synthesis of the anatomical and the functional aspects of the myocardium. In this talk I will attempt to describe the fundamentals with an emphasis on the clinical impact for practicing cardiologists, based upon experimental data on the diastolic and systolic architecture in normal, hypertrophic and dilated porcine hearts. Furthermore, novel theories on potential mechanisms in heart development that govern the final arrangement of the myocardium are presented.
