“Fewer errors and greater accuracy in detecting cardiac arrhythmias – this is what a new technique developed by a research team from the Universitat Politècnica de València and the company Corify Care S.L. makes possible, in collaboration with the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid and the Clínic Hospital in Barcelona.

The new method, led by the COR-ITACA group at UPV, enables the creation of far more precise maps of cardiac electrical activity without the need for invasive procedures.

“It represents a decisive step towards safer and more reliable diagnosis of arrhythmias, one of the most common heart problems with a major impact on public health,” highlights Carlos Fambuena, a researcher with the COR-ITACA group at the Universitat Politècnica de València.

The results have recently been published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

The challenge of current techniques

To analyze the heart’s electrical activity, electrophysiology usually relies on invasive techniques that require the insertion of catheters inside the organ. Although effective, these procedures are complex, costly, and not without risk.

On the other hand, the non-invasive technique of Electrocardiographic Imaging (ECGi) uses electrodes placed on the patient’s torso to create maps of the heart’s electrical activity. It is used for arrhythmia diagnosis and to guide treatments such as ablation or pacemaker implantation. However, traditional ECGi methods generated maps with errors, hindering clinical interpretation.

The innovation from UPV overcomes these shortcomings. “This new method resolves the issues by combining real patient data with mathematical models of electrical propagation, generating more realistic and clinically interpretable maps,” explains María Guillem, researcher at COR-ITACA of UPV.

Faster, safer, and more reliable arrhythmia diagnosis

In simulations, the new method achieves far higher accuracy than current techniques, reducing errors by up to 80% and providing a much more precise localisation of the starting and ending points of electrical activation. In addition, it has proven effective in real patients, as it identifies genuine electrical blocks without generating false results.

According to the researchers, this advance paves the way for faster, safer, and more reliable arrhythmia diagnosis, with potential applications in personalised treatment planning and the improvement of procedures such as ablation.

“With this new approach, we are moving one step closer to precision medicine in cardiology, using non-invasive methods that can be applied more safely to a larger number of patients,” concludes Carlos Fambuena.

Reference

Carlos Fambuena-Santos, Clara Herrero, Santiago Ros, Eric Invers-Rubio, Lluis Mont, Ismael Hernández-Romero, Felipe Atienza, Andreu M. Climent and María S. Guillem. Bayesian framework for atrial LAT estimation in ECGI. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=11143599