To help surgeons plan more precisely, researchers are building personalised digital models of individual patients' hearts, effectively, a "digital twin" that can simulate how AF behaves in that specific person and identify exactly where the dangerous electrical circuits are lurking before the procedure even begins and predict the outcome.
The team constructed detailed 3D digital heart models for nine patients and calibrated each model in three separate ways: using MRI scans that detect heart scarring, using electrical voltage measurements recorded during a cardiac mapping procedure, and using conduction velocity, a measure of how quickly the heart's electrical signal travels across different tissue regions.
Critically, electrical data, both voltage and conduction speed, consistently identified more and different targets than MRI data, suggesting that models relying solely on imaging may be working with an incomplete picture.
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