The remodeling of cardiac tissues has been implicated in the development of congestive heart failure. Therefore, the current emphasis in cardiovascular research is geared toward understanding the underlying processes in order to facilitate the development of better prevention and treatment regimens by improving the early detection and diagnosis of this disease. This paper focuses on the application of polarized light to address a major drawback of cardiovascular biomechanics research, which is the utilization of toxic chemicals to prepare samples for histological examination. To accomplish this without the use of toxic chemicals, a polarization microscopy imaging technique was developed and applied to a non-stained rat septum sample. This imaging technique provided sufficient enhancement of collagenous structures to determine the myo-lamina sheet angle, β, without the need for caustic staining.
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