Digital Twins and AI Revolutionize Cardiac Arrhythmia Treatment

Breakthrough in Cardiac Arrhythmia Detection

Researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) have developed a groundbreaking non-invasive method to locate the origin of premature ventricular contractions (PVCs), a common type of cardiac arrhythmia. This innovative approach combines electrocardiographic imaging (ECGI) with digital twins of the heart, significantly improving the accuracy of identifying arrhythmia focal points 1

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The Challenge of Cardiac Arrhythmias

Cardiac arrhythmias affect millions worldwide, with over a million sufferers in Spain alone. Accurate detection and treatment of these conditions remain a significant challenge in cardiovascular medicine. Conventional electrocardiography (ECG) has limitations due to anatomical differences between patients, while standard ECGI, though more detailed, still faces challenges in pinpointing the exact origin of arrhythmias 2

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Digital Twins and ECGI: A Powerful Combination

The new method integrates ECGI with personalized heart simulations, creating a "digital twin" that more faithfully reproduces myocardial electrical activity. This approach has demonstrated remarkable improvements in accuracy:

• The algorithm locates arrhythmia foci with an average accuracy of 7.8 mm, compared to over 30 mm error with standard ECGI.
• In a clinical case study, the new method achieved an estimation error of 15.5 mm, significantly better than the 36.7 mm error of conventional ECGI 1

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Development and Collaboration

The research team, led by the COR-ITACA group at UPV, collaborated with several institutions, including:

• Gregorio Marañón General University Hospital
• Corify Care S.L.
• Complutense University of Madrid
• Autonomous University of Barcelona
• Centre for Biomedical Research Network in Cardiovascular Diseases (CIBERCV)
• Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany)

Their findings have been published in the journal Computers in Biology and Medicine and will be presented at the EHRA 2025 Congress in Vienna 2

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Potential Impact on Treatment

This new method has significant implications for cardiac care:

• It can facilitate planning for interventions like catheter ablation.
• It may reduce the need for invasive scans and shorten intervention times.
• It could be particularly useful in complex cases, such as arrhythmias originating in the septum or at the base of the ventricle 1

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EPICA+: The Next Step in Cardiac Diagnosis

Building on this breakthrough, the COR-ITACA group is leading a new project called EPICA+. This initiative aims to:

• Apply the method to a broader range of arrhythmias and implement it in clinical practice.
• Integrate ECGI with artificial intelligence and digital heart twins.
• Utilize a database of over 1,000 patients and 20,000 computational models.
• Conduct clinical trials involving 144 patients to validate the technology.

The goal is to potentially double treatment success rates and reduce costs, marking a significant milestone in Spanish medical research and highlighting the impact of integrating advanced technologies in healthcare 2

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