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

在美国，每年大约有25万人死于潜在致命的心脏快速性心律失常（快速异常心跳）。 其中，只有10%的人能存活下来接受进一步的治疗。 治疗方案包括药物治疗-有许多副作用，而且往往不起作用-植入式装置-只治疗症状，并产生大量的初始和后续费用，或手术切除心律失常的根源。 手术通常是最有效的治疗方法，因为它是治疗心律失常的一种方法，但确定病灶部位是困难和耗时的。 将体表测量的电压外推到心脏上的电压（心电图的逆问题）的系统方法可以大大提高手术前定位心律失常病灶的能力，缩短手术时间，并为可能死于这些心律失常的患者提供低成本、非侵入性的初步筛查。 内布拉斯加大学的电气工程、机械工程和内科（心脏科）将购买一台工程工作站服务器和绘图设备，用于支持生物医学工程的研究。 该设备扩大了现有设施的能力，将主要用于逆向心电图的研究。 准确解决心电图逆问题的能力是研究的重点，直接意味着能够无创地创建心脏电活动的准确图像。 反过来，这张照片可以更准确地诊断和治疗与心脏传导相关的疾病。 理论工程科学家和实践医学研究人员/临床医生之间的合作将允许从数值理论到最终临床试验的方法研究，从而在不久的将来改善患者护理。 ***

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. ***