The Myosin Myocardial Mesh Interpreted as a Biological Analogous of Nematic Chiral Liquid Crystals
Résumé
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There are still grey areas in the understanding of the myoarchitecture of the ventricular
mass. This is despite the progress of investigation methods since the beginning of the 21st century
(diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging, microcomputed tomography, and polarised light
imaging). The objective of this article is to highlight the specificities and the limitations of polarised
light imaging (PLI) of the unstained myocardium embedded in methyl methacrylate (MMA). Thus,
to better differentiate our method from other PLI modes, we will refer to it by the acronym PLI-MMA.
PLI-MMA shows that the myosin mesh of the compact left ventricular wall behaves like a biological
analogous of a nematic chiral liquid crystal. Results obtained by PLI-MMA are: the main direction
of the myosin molecules contained in an imaged voxel, the crystal liquid director n, and a regional
isotropy index RI that is an orientation tensor, the equivalent of the crystal liquid order parameter.
The vector n is collinear with the first eigenvector of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI-MRI). The RI
has not been confounded with the diffusion tensor of DTI that gives information about the three
eigenvectors of the ellipsoid of diffusion. PLI-MMA gives no information about the collagen network.
The physics of soft matter has allowed the revisiting of Streeter’s conjecture on the myoarchitecture
of the compact left ventricular wall: “geodesics on a nested set of toroidal surfaces”. Once the
torus topology is understood, this characterisation of the myoarchitecture is more accurate and
parsimonious than former descriptions. Finally, this article aims to be an enthusiastic invitation
to a transdisciplinary approach between physicists of liquid crystals, anatomists, and specialists
of imaging.
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