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Love and the heart go together like chocolates and Valentine’s Day. Starting with the ancient Egyptians, and maybe even sooner, humans believed that the heart was where the soul, emotions and wisdom dwelled.
It was the only internal organ the Egyptians did not remove during mummification “so that the Goddess Ma’at might weigh it against the feather of truth in the afterlife and punish the heavy-hearted,” writes cultural historian Iain Gately.
The idea stuck. “Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night,” mused Romeo three thousand years later, and hearts of many sizes and designs will be ubiquitous everywhere today, on Valentine’s Day.
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An image captured by GE’s Revolution CT scanner shows a human heart with stents typically used to treat narrow or weak arteries.
But science has moved on and our rational understanding of the heart followed. In 1628, English court physician William Harvey described for the first time that the heart was a pump pushing blood around the body.
Doctors and researchers have been delving deeper into the heart ever since. Where Harvey and others relied on autopsies and detailed drawings, modern physicians are using high-tech imaging tools that can peer inside the body and help them fix broken hearts. Take a look.
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This stained newt chromosome seems to be getting in shape for Valentine’s Day. The image, which was captured by a high-resolution microscope from GE Healthcare Life Sciences, shows an RNA splicing factor in red and polymerase II in blue. The image could help scientists solve developmental biology riddles.
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Doctors and researchers are using the latest CT technology to peel away layers of tissue and study in detail the heart and other organs.
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The Revolution CT scanner produced this image of the heart in just one heartbeat.
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Scientists at GE Global Research are working with tiny, gas-filled “microbubbles" that can flow through the bloodstream and clarify ultrasound images of the heart (pictured here) and other organs. The technology could fit inside the ambulance and help medical staff diagnose patients on the spot, potentially saving lives.
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Vascular muscle cells, which typically surround blood vessels in the body, can be used to study abnormalities in several genetic syndromes. Australian researcher Leslie Caron captured this image with the IN Cell Analyzer.
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A cell model used to study ischemic heart disease. Image by Yoshiko Fujita, National Cardiovascular Center, Japan.
