Virtual Histology of the Heart Through CT Imaging: Preliminary Results of a Novel Noninvasive Approach for Cardiac Tissue Characterization

The world's population is aging and cardiovascular dis-eases can become the first cause of frailty in the next future. This study proposes a novel workflow to measure cardiac tissue quality and composition from a CT scan directly through the Hounsfield Units distribution of 3D samples. The cohort includes 15 healthy subjects to study normal heart densitometric composition and 7 hypertrophic pa-tients to measure how the pathology affects myocardial tis-sue. A significative fat content of 3% of the volume is found in the hypertrophic free wall while the connective tissue in the septum changed from just above 1% to around 5%. Therefore, the proposed noninvasive approach might be-come a clinical marker to improve diagnosis derived from CT imaging.