Study of the Movement of the Danio Rerio Heart Walls Using a Multimodal Setup

In recent years Danio rerio (Zebrafish) in the early stages of development are used as a model object for study of cardiovascular system of living organisms. In this work, a multimodal setup based on acoustic and optical microscopy has been developed to visualize in vivo the heart of Zebrafish larvae and measure parameters of blood and heart boundaries motion. The developed multimodal setup allows simultaneous recording of the ultrasonic and video data of the beating heart. The variation of the optical intensity with time is used for calculation of the heartbeat rhythm and synchronization of the asynchronically recorded ultrasonic data. It was shown that using post processing of the ultrasonic signals, the spatio-temporal distribution of blood velocity can be obtained. In addition the boundaries of the heart chambers can be detected in the ultrasonic images, their displacement can be measured and the sized of the chambers can be calculated. The results of this study may be useful for the development of new diagnostic methods for the cardiovascular research.