Our latest paper reports on computational modelling to simulate calcium release within realistic cardiomyocyte cell geometries to determine how cellular architecture can affect what you see under the microscope.

Read more in our paper:

D. Ladd, A. Tilunaite, H.L. Roderick, C. Soeller, E.J. Crampin, V. Rajagopal (2019)
Assessing cardiomyocyte excitation-contraction coupling site detection from live cell imaging using a structurally-realistic computational model of calcium release
Frontiers in Physiology 10:1263

For example, the image below indicates how the density of calcium release sites (ryanodine receptors, RyRs) within the cell will affect what you see in your confocal image.

Algorithms that detect “hot-spots” of calcium in these images as RyR sources will be affected by the density of RyRs that are present within the confocal plane, as well as ‘out of plane’ RyRs that are at a distance from the imaging plane.

This work was undertaken by David Ladd, and was lead by Vijay Rajagopal, and is the outcome of a great collaboration between Christian Soeller (@SoellerLab), Llew Roderick (@roderick_cardio) and the Crampin and Rajagopal (@cellsmb) groups.