Lessons of cyber heart attack
Computers may not have a soul but Scottish researchers are attempting to build a cyber heart to trigger the world’s first virtual heart attack.
It is hoped the ambitious project will ultimately help refine the treatment heart attack survivors receive and improve their long-term health.
Someone has a heart attack every 15 minutes in Scotland, according to the British Heart Foundation. While many will make a complete recovery, others will be left with heart failure, a potentially fatal condition that means the muscle pumps less effectively.
Between 1980 and 1996 the number of patients admitted to hospital with heart failure in Scotland rose by just under 75% in men and 45% in women, meaning 60,000 now live the condition.
Medical advances mean heart attacks now claim fewer lives, but surprisingly little is known about the irreparable damage they inflict.
Obtaining knowledge is difficult, given that detailed chest scans, which require patients to lie still for an hour, cannot be taken when sufferers are rushed into A&E because they need emergency treatment, and researchers also cannot cut open a patient to take a look.
But now a team at Glasgow University believe creating a computer model of a heart and simulating an attack, which means the blood supply is suddenly blocked, will give fresh insight into the damage caused, and how it affects a patient’s health and wellbeing.
They also envisage testing treatments on the computer model to monitor the benefits and drawbacks.
Mathematician Dr Yunfei Zhu is undertaking the calculations involved in developing the cyber heart and simulating an attack. He was on the verge of returning to China when the charity Medical Research Scotland stepped in with £150,000 to fund the new project over three years.
Dr Colin Berry, consultant cardiologist at Glasgow University’s Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, said: “Other people have created heart models, but there are limitations with them. Because of advancing technology and the mathematicians we have here in Glasgow and the other skills and facilities we have at the university and in the NHS, we have the potential to go the next stage.”
Information to build the virtual heart will come from a number of sources including MRI scans and studying animals.
Heart attacks can be triggered by dust-like particles passing into the heart muscle and clogging vessels, and Dr Berry, who also works at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, plans to scan patients undergoing a procedure to deal with this problem, before and afterwards, in order to directly compare changes in heart tissue. This detail can then be fed into the computer model.
He plans to test the accuracy of the virtual heart by asking it to predict the damage a patient is likely to suffer then comparing its output with the actual result.
Professor David Harrison, chairman of Medical Research Scotland, said: “There is no doubt that, as well as working to reduce the numbers of people suffering a heart attack each year, Scotland urgently needs to find better ways to identify the full extent of the damage it causes to the heart muscles. This damage is irreparable, can result in long-term debilitating illness, and is a significant burden on the NHS.
“Medical Research Scotland is pleased that our grant is supporting the young researcher whose mathematical modelling skills are crucial to this research. The project combines frontline clinical practice and leading-edge cardiovascular research.”
Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: “This type of innovative research should be applauded. Applying mathematical modelling, [and] using images of patients’ hearts obtained by MRI, could help us learn a great deal more about how best to treat heart failure. We await the results of the project with interest.”
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