"This study presents a significant advancement in addressing a major unmet clinical need: the accurate arrhythmia localization in patients with a variety of heart rhythm disorders," says Natalia Trayanova, Murray B. Sachs Endowed Chair and professor of biomedical engineering and medicine Medicine, and director of the Alliance for Cardiovascular Diagnostic and Treatment innovation at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved with the study. "The non-invasive nature of EWI using standard hospital hardware, and its ability to visualize the arrhythmia sources in 3D render it an attractive component for inclusion in the clinical ablation procedure."
EWI is a high-frame-rate ultrasound technique that can noninvasively map the electromechanical activation of the heart; it is readily available, portable, and can pinpoint the arrhythmic source by providing 3D cardiac maps. The new study, published online in Science Translational Medicine, evaluated the accuracy of EWI for localization of various arrhythmias in all four chambers of the heart prior to catheter ablation: the results showed that EWI correctly predicted 96% of arrhythmia locations as compared with 71% for 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG).
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