QUICK FACTS
The Cardiac Rhythm Management Laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham uses PV-WAVE for more efficient analysis of the causes and potential treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. They are able to increase productivity and significantly reduce development time for researchers because of PV-WAVE's rapid application development, flexible programming environment and cross-platform compatibility.

THE PROBLEM
Sudden cardiac death is the leading cause of death in the industrialized world. The Cardiac Rhythm Management Laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (CRML) seeks to understand the formation, maintenance and termination of life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias with the goal of improving treatment strategies.

CRML funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, American Heart Association, the Whitaker Foundation, and corporate partners.

CRML scientists are world leaders in electrical and optical mapping technology -- the simultaneous measurement of electrical potential distributions with high spatial and temporal sampling resolution. CRML's electrical mapping systems allow measurements in three dimensions for better understanding of how the heart's structure contributes to arrhythmias in normal and diseased states. Optical mapping systems relate fluorescence measurements from the surface of isolated hearts to underlying cellular level potentials.

CRML's primary objective is to investigate the causes and potential treatments of cardiac arrhythmias. Sudden cardiac death is due to heart attacks, and heart attacks are due to fibrillation. Fibrillation is rapid uncoordinated twitching movements that replace the normal rhythmic contraction of the heart and may cause a lack of circulation and pulse. Professor Richard Gray, Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and member of CRML, studies how waves propagate throughout the heart. He theorized that fibrillation could be identified by spiral wave patterns that occur in the heart.

To test this theory, Professor Gray used an optical mapping system using CCD cameras, and cardiac MRI. Cameras recorded the electrical activity from the heart surface during fibrillation. The resulting data "movies" represented complex ever-changing dynamic spatial patterns.

Analyzing and visualizing this data requires significant image and signal processing techniques, coupled with advanced graphical capabilities. However, no techniques existed to analyze such high-resolution data sets.

THE SOLUTION
With the help of PV-WAVE, Dr. Richard Gray and his counterparts developed a "first of its kind" method for identifying fibrillation. To find the spiral wave patterns that could indicate fibrillation, the scientists analyze the data both qualitatively and quantitatively. They examine the 3-D surface of the heart qualitatively using the PV-WAVE animation tool, allowing them to look on the inside and outside of the heart surface. Mathematical algorithms were used to identify quantitative patterns in the spiral waves. In this way, Dr. Gray and his team were able to make a connection between specific types of spiraling and fibrillation. "This fibrillation model is used extensively throughout the field of cardiology research," according to Richard Gray.

The application Dr. Gray and his team developed to analyze the spirals is called VIDAS (Video Imaging Data Analysis Software). VIDAS is an interactive software environment for visualizing and analyzing CCD optical mapping data. Processing may be done from the PV-WAVE command line and/or through the use of a graphical user-interface.

This application to understand what fibrillation is made up of is the first of its kind. Now that scientists understand how fibrillation works, they can test drugs against it to see if the fibrillation stops.

RETURN ON INVESTMENT
Professor Gray's research findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and also in the journal Nature. "This fibrillation model is used extensively throughout the field of cardiology research," according to Richard Gray.

WORLD CLASS PRODUCTS, SERVICES, AND SUPPORT
Visual Numerics has provided technical software solutions for numerical analysis and visualization for over 30 years. The company's software products help users understand complex data from a variety of sources and build business-critical applications. Visual Numerics offers two product lines: the IMSL® Numerical Libraries for powerful mathematical and statistical analysis and the PV-WAVE® visual data analysis development environment. Visual Numerics also offers customized consulting services for applications that involve mathematical, statistical, or visual data analysis to meet today's business analytical needs.