Figure 2.
Real-time in vivo imaging of cardiomyocytes and blood flow; and video-processing program. (a) Visualisation of regular motion of intercellular connections between adjacent cardiac myocytes and blood flow through capillaries and venules. Green, GFP; red, red-labelled dextran. Scale bar, 20 µm (Supplementary Video 2). (b) Analysis of the motion of normal cardiomyocytes facilitated by stabilisation of the beating heart by linear alignment and non-linear registration, followed by measurement of inter-pixel distance between reference points on a grid in the first frame and in each subsequent frame (Supplementary Video 3). Each image series (t0–t6) in Fig. 2 shows the movement over a period of approximately one heartbeat.