At the recent Computing in Cardiology (CINC 2024) conference, held in Karlsruhe (Germany), Samuel Ruipérez-Campillo and Gema Cabero, researchers from the ‘EP Analytics Lab’ group of the ITACA-UPV Institute, were recognised with the Clinical Needs Translational Award (CTA), a joint award between the CinC and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), for their innovative work entitled ‘Identification of Potential Ablation Targets for Ventricular Tachycardia Using a Novel Omnipolar-based Propagation Organization Metric’.

The study addresses one of the current challenges in the treatment of ventricular tachycardia (VT): the precise identification of critical sites for ablation during ventricular substrate mapping.

‘There is no consensus on the optimal approach to determine these key points, so Ruipérez-Campillo and Cabero’s research explores the potential of a new technique, called omnipolar local vector field heterogeneity (VFH), to accurately identify ablation objectives, which could significantly improve the treatment of this disease,’ explains José Millet Roig, head of the group at the ITACA institute.

Specifically, Ruipérez-Campillo and Cabero’s work differentiates functionally critical areas from those not directly involved during ventricular substrate mapping, in order to improve the cardiac ablation strategy.

‘The VFH metric is a promising mapping strategy that offers an advanced diagnostic tool to identify ablation targets in scar-related ventricular tachycardias. This advance has the potential to improve clinical results in patients suffering from this dangerous arrhythmia,’ says the ITACA-UPV researcher.

Finally, Paco Castells, co-director of the EP Analytics LAb, highlights that the award recognises the excellent work of Ruipérez-Campillo and Cabero, as it combines a solid scientific approach with real clinical applications.

“The importance of this award is highlighted, as it promotes multidisciplinary research with an emphasis on its future impact in the clinic. This research has been carried out in close collaboration with the Institute of Cardiovascular Science, University College London, which gives us extra motivation to see that our metrics and algorithms can play an important role in the clinic,’ concludes Paco Castells.