Modelling the hearts of the unborn
5 Apr 2013 by Evoluted New Media
An ECG device used in a study aimed at developing the first comprehensive model of the functioning foetal heart has shed light on surprising differences in human cardiac development to current animal models.
Researchers at the University of Leeds using the abdominal foetal device, developed at the University of Nottingham, discovered that the walls of the human heart are a disorganised jumble of tissue until relatively late in pregnancy and develop far more slowly compared to those of other mammals.
Dr Elefthreia Pervolaraki, who led the research at University of Leeds’ School of Biomedical Sciences, said: “Foetal hearts in other mammals such as pigs show organisation even early in gestation, with a smooth change in cell orientation going through the heart wall. But what we actually found is that such organisation was not detectable in the human foetus before 20 weeks.”
The monitor is a portable non-invasive device that attaches to the pregnant woman’s abdomen and measures the electrical activity from the heart of the foetus inside her uterus. The device uses complex algorithms to correctly identify signals related to the foetal heart rate using sensitive ECG-style electrodes.
The researchers, whose study was published in the Journal of Royal Society Interface Focus, used the device to administer a weekly foetal ECG recording from 18 weeks until just before delivery. This data was used alongside two different MRI scans from the hearts of dead foetuses and incorporated into a 3D computerised model which was built up using information about the structure, shape and size of the different components of the heart.
A detailed computer model of the architecture and activity of the developing heart will allow clinicians to make sense of the limited information they can obtain from the foetus using non-invasive monitoring of a pregnant woman.
Professor Arun Holden, also from the school of Biomedical Sciences at Leeds said: “By looking at how the human heart actually develops in real life and creating a qualitative descriptive model of its architecture and activity from the start of a pregnancy to birth, you are expanding electrocardiology into the foetus.”
