COVID-19 can cause vascular damage to the heart
December 2021
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany(1)
Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH), Hannover, Germany(2)
Medizinische Hochschule Hannover (MHH), Hannover, Germany(2)
For the first time, the researchers have used phase-contrast X-ray tomography to characterize the 3D structure of cardiac tissue from patients who succumbed to COVID-19. By extending conventional histopathological examination by a third dimension, the delicate pathological changes of the vascular system of severe COVID-19 progressions can be analysed, fully quantified and compared to other types of viral myocarditis and controls. Cardiac samples were scanned at a laboratory setup as well as at a parallel beam setup at a synchrotron radiation facility. The vascular network was segmented by a deep learning architecture suitable for 3D datasets, trained by sparse manual annotations. Pathological alterations of vessels were observed, indicative of an elevated occurrence of intussusceptive angiogenesis. The corresponding distributions show that the histopathology of COVID-19 differs from both influenza and typical coxsackievirus myocarditis.
3D virtual histopathology of cardiac tissue from Covid-19 patients based on phase-contrast X-ray tomography
Tim Salditt(1), Danny Jonigk(2)
Added on: 03-16-2022
[1] https://elifesciences.org/articles/71359[2] https://www.bionity.com/en/news/1174080/covid-19-can-cause-vascular-damage-to-the-heart.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=bionityde&WT.mc_id=ca0264
