ABSTRACT
Cardiovascular disease (CVD)—a class of diseases aecting heart and blood vessels-is the leading cause of death worldwide. e World Health Organization estimates there will be about 20 million deaths caused by CVD in 2015, accounting for 30% of all deaths worldwide. Conventional standard techniques for clinical diagnosis and investigation of CVD, such as histological examination, lack spatial resolution, cannot be used for the direct studies in vivo, and require tissue processing, which leads to structural alterations. Recent advances in nonlinear imaging and time-and spectrally resolved spectroscopies provide a new venture to visualize pathological changes related to CVD in vivo or in vitro at high resolution without laborious staining and sample preparation. Label-free imaging of the cardiovascular system (CVS) based on endogenous uorophores is routinely utilized nowadays to monitor
12.1 Introduction ......................................................................................245 12.2 Molecular Origins of AF in the CVS .............................................246
