Unmet Need
Life threatening ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a precursor of sudden cardiac death. VT may occur in patients with weakened heart muscle such as in the case of myocardiopathy and/or chronic myocardial infarction (MI). Radiofrequency catheter ablation is applied to regions of conduction delay to treat and or prevent the recurrence of these arrhythmias. Identifying the target regions within the heart is an invasive procedure that requires the induction of VT while the patient is under anesthesia. VT-induction is not always possible or well-tolerated in some patients and results of this invasive approach may vary under anesthesia. Moreover, several VT-inductions are required to find multiple regions of reentry. Measurement variability and repeated VT-inductions highlight the strong necessity for a heart measurement tool that is capable of accurately identifying regions of re-entry that are safe and broadly applicable to individuals with ventricular tachycardia.
Technology Overview
Researchers at Johns Hopkins have co-developed a personalized 3D computational model of human heart with myocardial infarction based on the cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which provides activation-repolarization data for the reentry vulnerability index (RVI) algorithm. The novelty of the model includes electrophysiology, ventricular geometry, and structural remodelling (including scar) that facilitates in silico electrical stimulation of the ventricle. The technology further uses RVI as a metric to identify region(s) with high vulnerability to reentry (with a low RVI value) using a patient-specific computational human heart model. The region(s) located by RVI are, therefore, ablated in order to prevent the heart from re-entrant VT and to prevent sudden death.
Stage of Development
Model development completed with validation of approach in various patient models on-going.
Publication
N/A
