Project 463242

Ventricular Tachycardia (VT, sometimes colloquially referred to as "V-Tach"), a heart rhythm disorder, is often caused by abnormal electrical activities within the diseased muscular wall of the ventricles (the lower chambres of the heart). During VT, the ventricles may beat so fast that the heart cannot pump blood effectively. In serious cases, VT often deteriorates into a state of chaos known as ventricular fibrillation, where heart muscles lose the ability to contract forcefully and thus the ventricles lose the capacity to pump blood at all, leading to cardiac arrest and sudden death. Diagnosis of VT often requires the deployment of sensitive medical devices inside the heart to detect abnormal electrical activities that disrupt the heart's rhythm. Tools currently available to cardiologists are limited to detect such unwanted electrical activities on the surface of the heart. Unfortunately for many patients, the source of VT can be elusive and lies deep inside the muscular walls of the heart, making diagnosis very difficult using current technology. Our research team has been exploring new ways to assess electrical activities within the heart's muscular wall. We plan to test these new strategies with hopes to improve the diagnostic power of clinical tools for cardiologists to detect and locate these VT-causing electrical disruptions within the heart's wall. While VT can be managed with medications or implantation of devices to modulate the heart's rhythm, it is often treated by cardiac ablation, a procedure to induce scarring and inactivate unwanted electrical activities at specific location in the heart. This is a widely used and effective strategy, but treatment is not always feasible when the source of VT lies beyond the heart's surface. In this proposed project, our research team will also work on new ways to perform cardiac ablation so that treatment can reach deeper inside the heart's wall to inactivate these electrical abnormalities in patients with VT.