Earlier recognition of cardiovascular diseases (AFFIP)

Themes: Biomedical signal processing/wavefield imaging

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a progressive disease and associated with severe complications such as stroke. Early treatment of AF is of paramount importance as it inhibits disease progression from the treatable (recurrent intermittent) to the untreatable (permanent) stage of AF. However, early treatment is seriously hampered by lack of accurate diagnostic instruments to recognize patients who will develop new onset AF or progress to a severer form of the disease.

The goal of this project is to develop age and gender based, bio-electrical diagnostic tests, the invasive and non-invasive AF Fingerprint, which consists of electrical atrial signal profiles and levels of atrial specific tissue/blood biomarkers. In daily clinical practice, this novel diagnostic instrument can be used for early recognition or progression of AF by determination of stage of the electropathology. As such, AF Fingerprinting enables optimal AF treatment, thereby improving patient's outcome.

The project is a collaboration between Erasmus University (Dept. Cardiology), VU Medical Center (Dept. Physiology), and TU Delft (Sections CAS and Bioelectronics), and will fund 4 PhD students.