Multimodal optic probe localization of cardiac fibrosis

Sudden cardiac death (SCD) accounts for 350,000 deaths each year in Europe alone. A major cause of SCD is a lethal cardiac rhythm disturbance, ventricular fibrillation (VF). Symptomatic patients can be treated with implantable defibrillators that deliver painful shocks to arrest arrhythmias. Yet only a minority of patients are eligible to targeted curative treatments, such as ablation therapy. This is due to an unmet capability to identify and localize the combined electrical, structural, or biochemical substrates that predispose to VF. The project MultiFib aims at the development of a multimodal imaging fibre probe for a combined morphological and biochemical characterization of arrhythmogenic substrates at optical resolutions as a guidance tool for cardiac ablation. MultiFib will for the first time integrate optical coherence tomography, second harmonic generation, and Raman spectroscopy in to a single optical fibre probe, enabling structural and biochemical mapping in conjunction with conventional electrical measures for an unprecedented assessment of myocardial properties and identification of pathological substrates. It should also provide a means to assess in real-time ablation efficacy. As a result, the availability of such a probe will substantially increase the eligibility for patients requiring treatment for cardiac electrical diseases to curative ablation therapy.