Recent developments in clearing and microscopy enable 3D imaging with cellular resolution up to the whole organ level. These methods have been used extensively in neurobiology, but their uptake in other fields has been much more limited. Application of this approach to the human heart and effective use of the data acquired present challenges of scale and complexity. Four interlinked issues need to be addressed: 1) efficient clearing and labelling of heart tissue, 2) fast microscopic imaging of human-scale samples, 3) handling and processing of multi-terabyte 3D images, and 4) extraction of structural information in computationally tractable structure-based models of cardiac function. Preliminary studies show that each of these requirements can be achieved with the appropriate application and development of existing technologies.

清除和显微技术的最新发展使 3D 成像具有细胞分辨率，直至整个器官水平。这些方法已广泛用于神经生物学，但它们在其他领域的应用受到了更多限制。将这种方法应用于人类心脏并有效利用所获得的数据提出了规模和复杂性的挑战。需要解决四个相互关联的问题：1) 心脏组织的有效清除和标记，2) 人体样本的快速显微成像，3) 多 TB 3D 图像的处理和处理，以及 4) 以计算方式提取结构信息易于处理的基于结构的心脏功能模型。初步研究表明，这些要求中的每一个都可以通过适当应用和开发现有技术来实现。