| Popis: |
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most frequent sustained cardiac arrhythmia, affecting up to 2% of the world population. For its treatment, commercial systems, based on electrical mapping, are prone to errors and catheters have a limited number of electrodes (i.e low spatial resolution). In recent decades, important advances were made in the understanding of AF and development of therapeutic strategies, obtained through the optical mapping, considered the gold standard in mapping cardiac electrical activity. Recently, we developed an experimental setup, combining electrical and panoramic optical mapping to customize AF maps, through an animal model with isolated rabbit heart. Although many efforts have been made by the HEartLab into the experimental setup development, the experiment is of high complexity, where several variables and circumstances (Surgery, Setup Variables, 3D Heart reconstruction, Acquisition of cardiac signals and 3D Mapping) could affect the outcomes, consequently, AF characterization. To overcome the current obstacles, and aiming standardization of the procedures and protocols, this study presents the CardioGuide, an Electrical and Imaging Cardiac Graphical User Interface made to assist in experiments, allowing it to be fully logged and ensure quality control of the experiment for the researchers. This platform has two modules, that are developed in LabVIEW and Python 3, and it’s structured in a tab-view mode. CardioGuide has been validated off-line, with retrospective experiments with the AF model, as such, the system provides all of the information registered through reports, that are accessible through PDF format. CardioGuide development is important to maintain the quality control of the experiments, ensuring that protocols during experimental procedures are followed and all of the details are being properly logged. |
