A navigation system to guide placement of cardiac pacemaker leads
This project aims at developing the cardiac GPS: a Gaussian-Process based Safety navigation system for pacemaker lead implantations. First, we will explore the capabilities of the Gaussian Process tracking method for real-time lead tracking based on fluoroscopic imaging including uncertainty estimations. Then, we will develop a fail-safe system including visual feedback to support physicians during the intervention by providing them with a confidence measurement about the lead location and tracking accuracy.
This project relies on the strong collaboration between UMC Utrecht and CARTTech. The embedding of the team in an Academic Research Hospital facilitates clinical applications and paves the way for potential future integration in the product portfolio (for CART-Tech) and clinical interventions (for UMC Utrecht).
This project is timely relevant as the number of patients globally undergoing pacemaker implantation has increased up to 1 million patients/year. During intervention, fluoroscopic imaging is used to guide the placement of the pacemaker lead in the septal tissue. Yet, this procedure does not allow real-time tracking of the lead to the ideal target position with respect to the septal tissue. However, this is crucial for optimal treatment outcome.
Theoretical investigations indicated that the proposed method may provide an optimal solution for real-time guidance of lead implantations. This methodology requires a short training phase at the beginning of the intervention; thereafter, the lead is tracked in real-time (milliseconds). Given its probabilistic nature, a Gaussian Process also provides a measure of the confidence of the estimated target locations in real-time, which will be used for quality assurance.
The project will lead to a better, standardized implantation procedure which considers the tissue characteristics, target location, and implantation angle. This will increase the treatment success rate, reduce the complications during intervention, reduce the time needed for these interventions, and the costs.
