Figure 1.

Anatomy of the arterial roots. (A) The arterial valve complex is made up of: three moving leaflets; the hinges, the attachment points of the leaflets to the wall; the commissures, the points of apposition of the leaflets close to the wall; the sinuses, pockets that form between the leaflets and the wall; and the interleaflet triangles, the regions of the wall that lie upstream (on the ventricular side) of the hinges, but are distal to the base of the sinuses that are found on the arterial side. Green = cardiomyocytes, blue = smooth muscle cells, yellow = fibrous tissue, purple = valve leaflet. The dotted line represents the position of the cross section through the valve complex. (B) Wholemount view of the adult mouse aortic root. The leaflets have been removed to allow the view of the other structures of the valve complex. (C,D) Masson’s trichrome images of the mouse aortic root at P21 in longitudinal and transverse planes. Red staining is muscle tissue, blue staining is fibrous tissue. c = commissure, h = hinge, ilt = interleaflet triangle, l = leaflet, s = sinus, sw = sinus wall.