Journal: bioRxiv
Article Title: Topological defects and coherent myocardial chirality shape torsional heart contraction
doi: 10.64898/2026.04.13.718243
Figure Lengend Snippet: Workflow for the detection of disclination lines. (a) Bar plot representation of the fibre orientation field within the myocardium based on MRI data. Each bar indicates the local fibre direction derived from diffusion tensor imaging. (b-d) Computational pipeline for detecting disclination lines. The cleaning procedure removes artefactual features that do not represent topologically significant disclinations, including: boundary-related fluctuations near tissue surfaces, poorly resolved regions of the right ventricle (RV) where the wall thickness is too thin, and small surface loops that can be trivially resolved. (b) Frobenius norm of the disclination density tensor throughout the myocardium, showing fibre orientational disorder. (c) Extracted cores of regions where the Frobenius norm exhibits significantly large values, identifying potential singular sites. (d) Final result after the cleaning procedure, displaying only the disclination lines that are topologically relevant for cardiac fibre organisation.
Article Snippet: Cardiac geometry was extracted from microscopy images or MRI data using Imaris software (Bitplane, version 10.0.0) to isolate the shape of the myocardium.
Techniques: Derivative Assay, Diffusion-based Assay, Imaging