Cardiac myofibril networks induce shear stress.

Abstract

Myofibril arrangement is critical to cardiac muscle function in health and disease. Historically, analysis of the impact of myofibril organisation on force and cell contraction has relied on the assumption of uniaxial arrays. However, improvements in imaging indicate that myofibrils form complex networks, though how these networks modulate force has yet to be explored. Here, morphological analysis of sheep left-ventricular cardiomyocytes is utilised to inform a non-linear finite element model of cell contraction. Analysis of deep learning segmentations of z-discs demonstrate that myofibrils are oriented about the contraction axis (mean =0.03∘) but deviate locally by up to 30∘ (standard devia..