Implant Support System for Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy

Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy (CRT) is a proven and accepted therapy in the medical sector in which an implanted device is used to treat the effects of advanced heart failure. For the effective operation of the CRT device, a correct placement of the wires in the left part of the heart in particular is of great importance. Determining the correct locations of the wires is a problem with CRT, which means that up to 40% of the implantations do not produce the desired effect. In the CRTPlus project, work has been done to improve an existing heart model (software) in such a way that this model can fill the current lack of a location-determiner for the CRT wires. And increase the clinical response rate. In collaboration with the Aalborg University in Denmark, the Dutch company Peacs has taken care of (a) the development of a database containing the relevant data (a.o. ECG, MRI, age, gender, CRT status) of people with severe heart failure; (b) improving the available heart models on the basis of the data collected, so that conduction in heart failure is more patient-specific; (c) the inclusion of aspects such as ischemia or scar tissue in the model; (d) extending the model to include variations in cardiac anatomy;  e) integrating the improvements into an all model suitable for CRT decision support. Hampered by the Covid19 situation, the project has been delayed by 6 months and has resulted in the intended improved heart models. As a result, CRT can be applied better in the future.

Read more about the project on this website.