Development of novel computational approaches for human cardiac mapping data - Improving understanding and treatment of atrial fibrillation

Cardiac arrhythmias, diseases where the heart beats irregularly, present a huge healthcare burden. Atrial fibrillation (AF) for example is an arrhythmia that affects over 30 million people worldwide. In AF, the heart's two upper chambers contract randomly and quickly. People with AF are at higher risk of stroke, heart attack and sudden death, so live with huge anxiety. A common treatment is "ablation". Here we stop part of the heart working. Alas, this fails approximately half the time, so AF recurs. We don't know why this happens. Electrical maps of the heart during ablation may hold the answer. But we don't have the tools to effectively explore these data. I aim to develop new software for this. My software will be state-of-the-art and freely available. This will help us improve AF treatment. That will make patient quality of life better and reduce stroke, heart attack and sudden death.