Engineering Research Equipment: Advanced Computing and Mapping Facilities for Inverse Electrocardiography Research

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9622158 Throne Each year approximately 250,000 people succumb to potentially lethal cardiac tachyarrhythmias (fast abnormal heart beats) in the United States. Of these, only 10% survive to undergo further treatment. Treatment options include drug therapy--which has numerous side effects and often does not work--implantable devices--which treat only the symptoms and incur significant initial and follow-up costs or surgical removal of the source of the arrhythmia. Surgery is often the most effective treatment, in that it is a cure for arrhythmia, but identifying the focal site is difficult and time-consuming. Systematic methods for extrapolating electrical voltages measured on the body surface to electrical voltages on the heart (the inverse problem of electrocardiography) could greatly improve the ability to locate the focus of the arrhythmia before surgery, lower the time in surgery and provide a low-cost, noninvasive initial screening of those patients likely to succumb to these arrhythmias. The Departments of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Internal Medicine (Section of Cardiology) at the University of Nebraska will purchase an engineering workstation server and mapping equipment which will be dedicated to support research in biomedical engineering. The equipment, which expands the capabilities of existing facilities, will be used primarily for research on inverse electrocardiography. The ability to solve the inverse problem of electrocardiography accurately, which is the focus of the research, directly implies the ability to noninvasively create an accurate picture of the electrical activity of the heart. This picture, in turn, makes it possible to more accurately diagnose and treat heart conduction-related illnesses. The collaboration between theoretical engineering scientists and practicing medical researchers/clinicians will allow the study of methods from numerical theories through to eventual clinical trials, giving the abilit y to improve patient care in the near future. ***