Foetal origins of complex congenital heart disease seen through the 'synchrotron lens'

The heart is most commonly affected by problems during early foetal organ development in humans, leading to various types of congenital heart disease (CHD), affecting 1:100 newborns. Survival for the complex types of CHD is poor and more than half of infants will not survive their first year of life. Despite clinical advances in the medical care of complex CHD, the origins for most cases remain obscure with incompletely understood pathophysiology and its related microstructures (<100 μm). Clinical imaging cannot depict the 3-dimensional micro-anatomy and microscope based methods like histology or electron microscopy lack the field of view and require extensive dissection. Therefore, we require synchrotron-based hierarchical phase-contrast tomography (HiP-CT) to achieve the required high-resolution depiction of the heart and lung before birth in whole post mortem fetuses. This will enhance our knowledge of cardiac foetal processes, ultimately leading to new treatment options for CHD.