The Cardiac Atlas Project: Towards a Map of the Heart

Although much is known about the pathophysiological cellular processes underlying heart disease, little is known about how the heart remodels structurally and functionally during the development of disease, and how particular presentations of disease fit into the spectrum of functional manifestations across patient groups. If clinicians were able to map the structure and function of the heart in a standard way, they would be able to characterize a particular patient’s function with the range of functional characteristics derived from large populations of patients. This would enable more precise quantification of the type and severity of disease, as well as more robust measures of evaluation of the effects of treatment. A major goal of computational biology is the development of mathematical and computer models that integrate observations from many studies into quantitative, selfconsistent, and comprehensive descriptions [1, 32]. Many groups have begun to construct physiological databases, linked with anatomical, functional, and clinical data gleaned from a variety of sources. This information must be integrated across many scales, from molecular interactions to organ system function. Several initiatives have begun in this vein, centering on different organ systems and pathology targets. Projects include the Integrative Biology Project [14], the ECG signal database [20], the Cardiac Gene Expression database [6], the Medical Image File Archive Project [18], anatomical ontology databases such as the Foundational Model of Anatomy [11], Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside [12], and the Physiome Project [1]. The establishment of large imaging databases is essential for the development and validation of these physiological models. Multidimensional image data provide the ability to customize biomechanical and physiological parameters to a particular patient’s anatomy and cardiac performance. Large population based databases also enable statistical models of normal and pathological function to be developed,