Doctors & patients are saying about 'A-Fib.com'...
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“I think your site has helped a lot of patients.”Dr. Hugh G. Calkins, MD Johns Hopkins,
Baltimore, MD
Dr. Jagmeet Singh
2024 AF Symposium
Unlocking Arrhythmias: vMap’s AI-Driven Revolution (Vektor Medical)
Dr. Jagmeet Singh of Mass General, Boston, MA gave a Spotlight Session talk on a technology that could greatly facilitate how EPs locate and ablate arrhythmia spots in the heart.
Using standard, non-invasive 12-lead ECGs, Vektor Medical’s vMap system utilizes “advanced algorithms and AI-based techniques” [Artificial Intelligence] to locate and identify source locations of both focal and fibrillation-type arrhythmias.
Beat-by-Beat 2D and 3D Cardiac Maps
The vMap system uses advanced proprietary algorithms to generate beat-by-beat 2D and 3D cardiac maps to provide a visualization of the probabilistic source of a particular arrhythmia. The core technology, the computational ECG mapping system, was created from a comprehensive library of more than one million model-predicted electrograms.
One study included 225 patients in a blind multi-center study. vMap maps were compared to successful ablation studies with an overall accuracy of ±97%. Mapping took an average time of 48 seconds.
vMap reduced the time from mapping to treatment, procedure duration, and fluoroscopy.
vMap FDA Cleared―Future Uses
The vMap system is FDA cleared and has undergone “extensive clinical validation”.
Dr. Singh anticipates that in the future, vMap will integrate ECG with AI alongside electroanatomical maps. It will also be used with CT and MRI to better visualize A-Fib spots in the heart.
Editor’s Comments
Editor’s CommentsvMap’s Analysis Tool Medical Breakthrough! The Vektor Medical vMap system’s AI-based algorithms represent a medical breakthrough and groundbreaking development in arrhythmia care. Doctors can now compare a particular patient’s ECG to a huge database of other ECGs. The vMap system using AI then computes rapidly and accurately where an A-Fib signal(s) is coming from in a particular patient’s heart. To date, it’s the only FDA-cleared non-invasive system that utilizes just a 12-lead ECG to map arrhythmias.
The vMap analysis tool will improve cardiac ablation by enabling EPs to rapidly and accurately map where A-Fib signals are coming from. It will also increase procedural efficiency as well as optimize workflows. The treatment of patients will be improved. One would expect the success rate of catheter ablations to advance. And according to Dr. Singh, vMap decreased ablation procedure time by about 26%. It potentially increased procedure volume by 20% thereby possibly improving the EP catheter lab’s bottom line.
Should Patients Seek Out EPs Who Use vMap? Does this mean that patients should only seek an ablation from an EP or center that uses vMap? Right now, it’s too early to assert this. But this may soon be the case. vMap is being used in clinical practice and is being adopted at new hospitals throughout the U.S.
Patients should ask their EP about technologies that identify sources in addition to PVI or inquire directly about hospitals that offer vMap at VektorMedical.com.
(Experienced master EPs may not need this. Other mapping systems may prove as effective.)
vMap System Useful for Newer EPs: One would expect that the vMap system may become very useful for newer EPs showing them more easily where to look for A-Fib signals, especially whether to look at the left or right atrium first. It may also improve ablation outcomes.
