To help in correcting heart rhythm deviations a catheter balloon can be inflated to isolate the pulmonary vein. In the Position project, circuitry was attached to the balloon surface to check and/or improve this procedure. The use of these ‘smart’ catheters has the potential to significantly reduce the procedure time.
Modelling a human heart
Reden has helped in the development of the smart balloon by modelling the catheter inside a human heart. The model simulates Pulmonary vein isolation using a novel ablation technique. A balloon is inflated with a low temperature substance and pressed against the Pulmonary vein. It was able to calculate the locations where the balloon has contact with the heart and how much force is needed for occlusion. Although for the proof of concept the model was quite basic, in principle these kind of models can be made patient specific with varying size of the left atrium and diameter and locations of the pulmonary veins and support in the selection of the balloon size etc.
This work has been a joint effort of Reden, Tyndall, Creganna medical and Philips within the ECSEL JU POSITION-II project.
Another one of the challenges was to model the strength of the electronic tracks, as they are attached to a flexible balloon. You can read here about how this challenge was tackled in another project: Getting connected with miniaturized flexible electronics.
