MappingLab cardiac optical mapping systems

Cardiac optical mapping has become an important fluorescent imaging technique in the study of the electrical properties of multicellular cardiac preparations, especially in terms of investigating the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias. It is applicable for studying isolated hearts, intact cardiac tissue preparations, muscle slice and monolayers of pluripotent stem-cell derived or neonatal cardiac myocytes.

Optical mapping assists with use of voltage-sensitive dyes that track changes in the potential difference across the cell membrane of the cardiac myocytes, whilst fluorescent microscopy is used to image the spread of electrical waves (using calcium indicators) throughout the heart. Due to its potential to generate high spatiotemporal resolution information on electrophysiological properties, optical mapping has been used to interrogate the fundamental mechanisms governing the electrical stability of the heart in health and disease.

MappingLab provides standard OMS-PCIE-1001, OMS-PCIE-1002 and OMS-PCIE-2002 systems as well as tailor-made systems. All optical mapping systems are suitable for recording potential and calcium fluorescent signals simultaneously and can collect weak emitted lights at wavelength of 425 to 900 nm from a minimum 6.5 x 6.5 µm pixel area with the spatial resolution ranged from 32 x 32 to 2048 x 2048. The back-illuminated CMOS cameras in the system offer 95% QE with extreme sensitivity and high frame rates. It has high speed and low noise acquisition with a dynamic range up to 50,000:1 (94 dB).

The optical axis can be constructed either vertically or horizontally and the detection area ranges from 5 to 30 cm. There are various I/O connectors for helping researchers to set up the communication system. An 8-channel TTL controller is designed for synchronising devices such as camera, LED light controller, stimulator, ECG, MAP, pressure and temperature probe with the optical mapping system.

The OMapRecord/Scope data acquisition and analysis software has a user-friendly intuitive interface and highly efficient data management. It operates with Windows 7, 8, 10 and Mac OS X and uses either a USB 3.0 or PCIE interface.