The 88th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Cardiology, which was held for the first time since 2019 in the presence of the Congress Center Rosengarten in Mannheim, was very well attended. 
More than 7,100 audience members watched the sessions of the 88th Annual Meeting, the majority of them - more than 5,300 people - on site in Mannheim. The IBT was represented with several posters and an invited talk on "Computational Cardiac Modeling - Synergies with Machine Learning" (Axel Loewe).

After more than 25 years at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Prof. Dr. Olaf Dössel with a symposium on medical technology and with various subsequent celebrations in retirement. Specialist presentations by current and former representatives of the Institute for Biomedical Engineering (IBT) and the Städtisches Klinikum were followed by greetings from the KIT, Division III, professional associations, companions as well as the faculty and student council. At the celebration that followed, the IBT said goodbye to its head of institute with various musical personal contributions and with the traditional, self-made "doctoral hat".
Many thanks to Olaf Dössel and all the best for your retirement!

How can the maintenance effort for research software be reduced by clever concepts and automation? The article published in the journal "Bausteine Forschungsdatenmanagement" presents ideas and solutions using the example of openCARP.

A recent research topic published in the renowned Frontiers in Physiology journal highlights the latest progress in technology for atrial fibrillation diagnosis, monitoring and treatment.
The collection of 38 articles was co-edited by IBT researcher Axel Loewe and features 3 studies in which IBT was involved.

Our research is featured in the latest episode of Renal Research Institute's "Frontiers in Kidney Medicine and Biology" in an interview with Axel Loewe. Watch the video, listen to the podcast, or read the transcript.

The Institute of Biomedical Engineering welcomes Mr. Jonathan Krauß as a new research assistant. Since January 2022, he has been working in the "Computational Cardiac Modeling“ research group on electro-mechanically coupled human heart simulations. For this purpose, efficient and robust coupling schemes will be developed and evaluated. 
Jonathan Krauß completed his studies in mechanical engineering at KIT. His research topics were focused on continuum mechanics and medical robotics.

IBT former researcher Giorgio Luongo, PhD presented a hybrid machine learning-based classification of 12-lead ECG to discriminate between patients with three different kind of atrial flutter (cavotricuspidal-isthmus-dependent vs. peri-mitral vs. other left atrium atrial flutters). This novel algorithm may aid to identify non-invasively the best ablation procedure to terminate the arrhythmia prior to the invasive procedure in the EP labs. This work is the result of a successful collaboration between 5 engineering and clinical groups (Università degli Studi di Milano, University of Leicester, ABC Federal University, Städtisches Klinikum Karlsruhe and IBT). The paper is published in EP Europace journal and is freely available.

The international "Atrial Signals" congress took place for the fourth time in September 2021 under the patronage of the Karlsruhe Municipal Hospital (Prof. Dr. med. Claus Schmitt) and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Olaf Dössel ) including synergy effects.

A joint study of the University Heart Center Freiburg-Bad Krozingen and the IBT is featured on the cover page of the December issue of the renowned scientific journal "EP Europace". The study uses the ECG and ECGI to diagnose pathological changes in the atria.

The graduations season continues at IBT. We are very proud to announce that Mark Nothstein has successfully defended his PhD thesis: "Characterizing Atrial Fibrillation Substrate by Electrogram and Restitution Analysis”. Look what a nice hat his colleagues have made for him!

IBT researchers in the MY-ATRIA consortium have published a new method to better characterize atrial flutter. The approach makes use of graph-theoretical methods.

20 employees and students of IBT attended this year's annual meeting of the German society of biomedical engineering. 9 presentations and 3 posters from the three research groups were held and presented. Congratulations to Giorgio Luongo for winning the 2nd price for patient safety and to Hannes Welle for the 2nd place in the student competition.

Claudia Nagel presented her work at the workshop for Statistical Atlases and Computational Modeling of the Heart (STACOM). In her presentation, she talked about an application of the bi-atrial statistical shape model developed at IBT for identifying left atrial enlargement with the 12-lead ECG.

Let's congratulate our colleague Giorgio Luongo and the whole team for winning the second prize for the patient safety in biomedical engineering 2021 with the publication “Machine learning enables noninvasive prediction of atrial fibrillation driver location and acute pulmonary vein ablation success using the 12-lead ECG”. The award was handed in occasion of the BMT 21 conference in Hannover, and offered by the German Society of Biomedical Engineering (DGBMT).

IBT researchers have published an improved ventricular coordinate system for localization, data mapping and regression on cardiac geometries. An open MATLAB implementation of the method for precise and intuitive description of position in the heart is available for the community.
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On October 28th and 29th 2021, the Institute of Biomedical Engineering is hosting a workshop which aims at teaching foundational coding to researchers, open to registration for all KIT members.

IAMO Policy Brief 42 focuses on the needs and strategies for sustainable research software practices based on a position paper.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy impairs cardiac mechanics but the differential effects of a thicker wall, reduced active force, fiber disarray and increased tissue stiffness are not clear. IBT researchers could elucidate their contribution to deformation, strain, strain rate and wall thickening using a computational model of the heart.

On the 8th of July Ekaterina Kovacheva completed her PhD with the title “Model Based Estimation of the Elastomechanical Properties of the Human Heart.” Congratulations from everyone at IBT.

In cooperation with the IANM (KIT) and the IEKM (University Heart Center Freiburg), researchers at IBT proposed an electro-mechanically coupled computer model of a personalized human heart. The manuscript was published in the Journal Mathematics.

Researchers at IBT investigated how many cameras are needed so that a microsurgical operating channel can be reconstructed as completely as possible in 3D.
The work was published in the Journal of Imaging (MDPI): https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging7050087

Researchers at IBT investigated whether the amount of diseased fibrotic tissue in the atria can be estimated non-invasively and quantitatively with features extracted from P waves of the 12-lead ECG.
The work was published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine (MDPI).

We welcome Mr. Simon Hoffmann as a research assistant. His work will focus on data processing in ophthalmology.

IBT researcher Giorgio Luongo and colleagues presented a machine learning-based classification of 12-lead ECG to discriminate between patients with pulmonary vein drivers vs. those with extra-pulmonary vein drivers of atrial fibrillation.
The paper is published in the Cardiovascular Digital Health Journal.

KIT's Institute of Biomedical Engineering develops, based on mathematical equations, a computational heart model to enable targeted therapy of cardiac arrhythmias. The model supports medical research and development in the fields of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

Researchers at IBT showed that the statistical analysis of cycle lengths during atrial fibrillation allows to estimate refractory periods of the underlying substrate. The study combines a broad set of simulations with clinical acquisitions and was published in Europace EP.

The Paper describes the environment for the development of sustainable research software in Germany, identifies challenges and calls for action.

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Das IBT nimmt an der jährlichen VDE DGBMT Kongressveranstaltung teil.

Eight delegates represented IBT at this year’s Computing in Cardiology conference in Rimini which brought together both onsite and remote participants during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The current issue of the popular scientific journal „Spektrum der Wissenschaft“, the German branch of the Scientific American, features an article of the head of the Computational Cardiac Modeling group at IBT. Under the headline „A digital heart“, Axel Loewe describes the motivation for and the basics of computational heart models and illustrates first successful examples of translation to clinical practice and clinical research.

That is the topic of the Herrenhausen Forum on July 14, 2020. The discussion with experts from IT, medicine and law was about responsibility and trust.

In collaboration with the Politecnico of Milan, IBT presented an electromechanical model of bi-ventricular human geometries to study influences on the pressure-volume relation.

In collaboration with the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at KIT and the University Heart Center Freiburg – Bad Krozingen, researchers from the Medical University Hospital Heidelberg published an article on the antiarrhythmic effects of A293 on cardioversion of atrial fibrillation. As a high-affinity potassium channel inhibitor, A293 mitigates the pathological shortening of the atrial action potential duration.  The study indicated the therapeutic potential of A293 for the treatment of atrial fibrillation with single cell experiments, a porcine model, as well as computer simulations in a three-dimensional atrium. The open access article was published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA).

The collaborative opinion article "An environment for sustainable research software in Germany and beyond: current state, open challenges, and call for action" was recently published as a preprint for open peer review in F1000Research. This paper is the outcome of a workshop at the first German conference on Research Engineering and a dedicated DFG-funded follow up workshop hosted by the Robert Koch Institute. KIT and IBT researchers played a leading role in bringing together the group and coordinating the writing process. With more than 40 authors and wide community review, this grass-roots initiative calls for action to make software a first class citizen in research.

Two members of the IBT attended, presented two talks and shared their results on novel segmentation methods and a 3D microscale test target at the SPIE Photonics West Conference in San Francisco on the 01st February to 06th February. The useful feedback will be incorporated in further research and contact to possible new collaborates was set.

The issue 1/2020 of the "dotnetpro“ journal features an article about the research of the cardiac modeling group. dotnetpro delivers expert knowledge for software developers, who use Microsoft technologies to write programs for Microsoft and non-Microsoft platforms. The idea behind the article is to provide a broader view for the dotnetpro readers, who mostly are software developers. The article introduces and describes the implementation of the multiscale simulation approach (from ion channels via cells and tissue up to the organ) for electrophysiology, which is developed and used at IBT.