The Heart as Art

This image (which appears on the cover of Nature Reviews Cardiology throughout 2017) represents the first ever time a human's atrial chambers have been imaged in their entirety to reveal the orientation and arrangement of bundles of cardiac tissue. “I obtained this image using what is called diffusion tensor MRI as part of my doctoral work and decided to enter it into a contest being held by the journal,” says Pashakhanloo, who works in the laboratory of Natalia Trayanova, the Murray B. Sachs Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. “I thought it was visually very interesting, and the journal editors obviously agreed.”