Join us for our next Colloquium about AI in biomedical engineering! With our special guest - Till Keller, Department of Cardiology and Angiology, Medical Center, University of Freiburg, Bad Krozingen - we will talk about Transformation of Medical Care and Research Based on Digitalisation - Health 4.0. Let's meet in person at the KIT Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBT) and online on Zoom!
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Jule Bender is working on cohort modeling of the human atria for in silico trials.

Our group recently attended the Helmholtz AI Conference 2025 in Karlsruhe. It was a highly insightful event, emphasizing critical advancements in AI for science, including foundational models, agentic AI, and energy consumption. Silvia and Julian presented their research via posters (PSII-43 and PSII-46), sparking valuable discussions. This conference offered a crucial opportunity to engage with the AI community and gather new perspectives for our work.

From April 23–26, the 91st Annual Meeting of the German Society of Cardiology (DGK) took place in Mannheim. Joshua and Silvia presented posters on their latest research (pacing frequency dependence of cardiac excitation conduction via fibroblasts and non-invasive atrial cardiomyopathy diagnosis), while Christian gave a talk on the automatic division of bi-atrial geometries. Pascal and Axel also attended, connecting with the cardiology research community.

From March 30 to April 1, the annual meeting of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) took place, bringing together scientists, healthcare professionals, and key stakeholders from around the world involved in arrhythmia management. Axel Loewe and Silvia Becker represented the IBT at the event. Additionally, Silvia gave a presentation on why it matters how the P-wave is measured in the ECG.

From March 12 to 14, the E-Science Days took place in Heidelberg with the theme “Research Data Management: Challenges in a Changing World.” Axel Loewe and Silvia Becker represented the IBT in the workshop “Information Infrastructures in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges,” organized by the Leibniz ScienceCampus DiTraRe. Additionally, Silvia Becker, together with Lea Singson from FIZ Karlsruhe, gave a presentation on the legal aspects of digital twins and synthetic ECGs.

A new paper investigating the interactions between reduced extracellular calcium levels and sympathetic stimulation as a compensatory mechanism, potentially contributing to sudden cardiac death in chronic kidney disease patients, has been published in the Journal of Physiology.

Our recent publication "Consensus Statement on the Credibility Assessment of Machine Learning Predictors" in the journal Briefings in Bioinformatics aims to ensure the reliability and credibility of machine learning models used in clinical and biomedical contexts. Together with other leading experts, we outline a structured framework based on 12 foundational statements and propose rigorous guidelines for evaluating and enhancing the credibility of ML predictors, particularly when used in high-stakes healthcare decisions.

A new paper introduces the latest version of the DREAM for simulating cardiac arrhythmias. Published in Engineering with Computers, it provides an efficient approach to reentry simulations in cardiac electrophysiology.
Read the full paper here.

Students from the Medical Image Processing for Guidance and Navigation course visited Getinge, a global leader in Hybrid Operating Room development. The visit offered valuable insights into advanced surgical technologies and their practical applications in modern healthcare.

The openCARP cardiac electrophysiology simulator openCARP developed by IBT and collaborators won the Helmholtz Software Award in the Newcomer category. The award aims to promote the development of professional and high-quality research software and to recognize the commitment to software as the basis of modern science.
[more@Helmholtz]

Prof. Dr. Olaf Dössel was elected spokesperson for the health technologies thematic network at acatech. acatech is the German Academy of Engineering Sciences.
Olaf Dössel also received the KIT Verdienstnadel (KIT Medal of Merit). With this, KIT honors his diverse activities as an ambassador for KIT and as honorary chairman of the Studierendenwohnheim e.V. des KIT (KIT Student Residence Association).

A new course for Master Students will be offered since WS 24/25 from IBT lectures. The course, titled “Medical Image Processing for guidance and navigation”, will be worth 9 ECTs for a total of 6 hours per week of lectures/practical exercises plus the accomplishment of a group project.
Link to Campus Management für Studierende

From September 26 to 28, the DGK Herztage took place in Hamburg – a platform for exchanging the latest insights, innovative solutions, and valuable experiences in the field of cardiology. Christian and Silvia represented the IBT with a poster and two presentations.

This years Cardiac Physiome Workshop 2024 took place from September 12 to 14, where around 140 researchers engaged on integrating experimental and mathematical approaches to advance cardiac physiology research. In addition to three posters from our group, the contribution of our PhD student Stephanie Appel was selected for a presentation. Our PhD student Jonathan Krauß won the poster award.

The state of Baden-Württemberg would like to thank Irenen Günter for her forty years of service in the public service. The certificate of thanks was presented to her by Professor Werner Nahm in the presence of her colleagues. We wish her all the best for her future endeavors.

Julian Mierisch is working on model-informed machine learning for the prediction of postoperative atrial fibrillation and its targeted prevention. His focus areas were Data Science and Software Engineering.

From June 17th to June 21st, Stephanie and Silvia attended the Summer School in Bordeaux to deepen their knowledge of cardiac electrophysiology. Engaging lectures and an interactive lab tour at Liryc made this week a remarkable experience.

In this study by Oxford University and KIT, various therapies were systematically investigated in 800 virtual patients with atrial fibrillation. The study aims to assign patients in whom pulmonary vein isolation was not successful as an initial therapy to optimal pharmacological and ablation therapies on the basis of in-silico tests. Treatment strategies vary depending on atrial size and the presence of low-voltage areas. In-silico models are a promising tool for individual therapy optimization in atrial fibrillation.

From June 2 to June 4, the Fickle Heart Workshop took place at the Isaac Newton Institute of Mathematical Science in Cambridge, focusing on digital twins, artificial intelligence and uncertainty quantification tools for calibration and forecasting. Axel, Patricia and Stephanie took the opportunity of this workshop to present their work in this field.

In this year’s European Community on Computational Methods in Applied Sciences (ECCOMAS) conference in Lisbon, our PhD student Joshua Steyer presented his results on electrograms in a cell-to-cell cardiac model within the "Computational Cardiology: Modeling and Simulating the Heart" mini-symposium.

During April the conference of the German society of cardiology (DGK) and the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) took place bringing together cardiologists from Germany and around the world. On the 7th-9th The European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) conference took place in Berlin. Our PhD student Patricia Martínez was nominated for the Young Investigator Award in the Basic and Translational Science category and presented her work on the effects of right atrial arrhythmia susceptibility in patient-specific computer models.

In this year’s Biosignals Workshop in Göttingen, we presented our work on electrograms in a cell-by-cell model. We have shown that healthy excitation propagation, as opposed to what we would expect in homogenised models, yields asymmetric electrograms exhibiting several small deflections. These deflections, in turn, can be explained by the multimodality of cell activation as well as the deceleration of the excitation wave when transitioning between two cardiac cells.

A new course for Master Students will be offered since SS24 from IBT lectures. The course, titled “Medical Image Processing for guidance and navigation”, will be worth 6 ECTs for a total of 4 hours per week of lectures/practical exercises plus the accomplishment of a group project.
The language of the lecture is English.

This open access book has brought together 138 experts in In Silico Trials working in academia, the medical industry, regulatory bodies, hospitals, and consulting firms. Through a consensus process, these experts produced the first attempt to define some Good Simulation Practices on how to develop, evaluate, and use In Silico Trials.  Good Simulation Practice constitutes an indispensable guide for anyone who is planning to engage at any title with In Silico Trials. IBT researcher Axel Loewe has co-edited the chapters Model Development and The Investigator: Modellers and Analysts.

Together with our collaborators at the Institute for Applied and Numerical Mathematics, we investigated the impact of modeling choices such as mesh size, incompressibility constraint, active strain or active stress as well as the choice of the damping scheme. Click here to learn about our findings: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gamm.202370010

Which effects does the mechanical activation of the heart cause on the electrical control of cardiac rhythm and excitation? Using the fully coupled electro-mechanical computer model of the heart developed at IBT, we showed that mechano-electric feedback changes activation and repolarization patterns throughout the heart during sinus rhythm and leads to a markedly more heterogeneous electrophysiological substrate. Read the full study published open access in The Journal of Physiology.

From November 28th until December 1st took place in Linz the Workshop in modeling and simulation of ablation therapies in medicine at the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (RICAM) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. During the week, our scientist Axel Loewe and Carmen Martinez had the opportunity to present their work and meet other successful researchers in the field.

A research project at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology relies on artificial intelligence to localize the origin of heart palpitations based solely on a standard ECGS.

To KIT Campus Report Podcast (German)

With five members and three former members of our Cardiac Modeling Group, we participated in this year’s 50thedition of the Computing in Cardiology conference in Atlanta, USA which took place from October 1st to 4th. After the Sunday symposium of the conference, which put special attention on the impact of racism and sexism on health, we presented some of our most recent results. We are proud of Carmen Martínez who was awarded as a semi-finalist of the Young Investigator Award and our former visitor Albert Dasí who made it to the finalists. Congrats, Carmen and Albert! We are looking forward to hosting the 51st edition of the CinC next year in Karlsruhe.

From September 20-22, 2023, the 10th edition of this international conference was held in Vienna, Austria. The IBT was represented with a presentation on Electro-mechanical modeling and simulation of the human heart in the mini-symposium Continuum biomechanics of active biological systems.

Together with researchers from the Medical University of Graz, PTB Berlin and King's College London, we have published a dataset of 16,900 synthetic ECGs. The ECGs have been generated by detailed computer simulations that allow each ECG signal to be traced back to unique model parameters with biological meaning.

The IBT and Prototera Association (Portugal) established an agreement for 4-year PhD fellowships funded by the Portuguese Government. Students who are interested in doctoral research projects in the field of Image Guidance in Proton Therapy can contact Prof. Francesca Spadea mf.spadea@kit.edu. The 4 year project will be conducted in joint collaboration with the University “Instituto Superior Técnico” of Lisbon.

Together with physicians from the University Heart Center Freiburg Bad Krozingen, we compared whether substrate underlying atrial fibrillation can be localized not only in sinus rhythm but also during atrial fibrillation. The moderate agreement suggests to perform the investigation in sinus rhythm.

At the SIAM Conference in Portland, Cristian Barrios Espinosa presented research on advancing machine learning methods in cardiology. Discover more about the diverse applications of dynamical systems in medicine.

From May 24-26, we could welcome around 60 international guests in Karlsruhe for the 5th openCARP user meeting. The fully booked workshop offered training and discussion formats for both new users and experts.

The Institute of Biomedical Engineering welcomes Mr. Moritz Linder as a new research associate. Moritz Linder completed a master's degree in mechatronics and information technology at the KIT.

Classic machine learning methods require the pre-processing of ECG signals. Together with researchers from the University of Oldenburg, PTB Berlin, Aalborg University and Charité Berlin, among others, IBT researchers have recently published annotations of more than 20,000 ECGs. For this, also signal processing algorithms developed at the IBT were used.

At the beginning of May, we had the pleasure to welcome about 30 researchers from all over Europe at KIT, who are working on the improvement of diagnosis and therapy of atrial fibrillation in the European PersonalizeAF project. After two days of "Career Opportunities Workshop" for the 15 PhD students, the focus of the last two days was on the exchange of latest research results.

The European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) conference took place in Barcelona on April 16-18, 2023 at its 20th anniversary. Our PhD student Patricia Martínez was nominated for a Young Investigator Award in Clinical and Translational Science.

In collaboration with University Magna Graecia (Italy), Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and our Clinical Partner at San Raffaele Hospital of Milan (Italy), we proved that the prognostic value of radiomics features extracted from MR images of PCNSL patients overcomes the current prediction model based on clinical features. These results pave the way for further investigations on the potential role of image features to drive treatment choice.

Last week the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Cardiac Arrhythmia Mechanisms was held in Galveston (Texas, USA). Patricia Martínez and Albert Dasí won first prize in the student poster competition.

On March 29th and 30th 2023, the Institute of Biomedical Engineering is hosting a workshop which aims to teach foundational coding to researchers, open to registration for all KIT members.

On January 1, 2023, Prof. Maria Francesca Spadea took over the professorship for modeling and simulation in medical technology at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.

While good treatment options exist for paroxysmal atrial fibrillation, persistent atrial fibrillation still cannot be treated satisfactorily. Together with researchers from the University Heart Center Freiburg Bad Krozingen, anatomical and functional differences between these two types have now been identified, which may form the basis for future tailored therapeutic approaches.

Together with researchers from Marburg, Munich, Frankfurt, the effect of a new group of genetic mutations on cardiac electrophysiology was investigated. The study was published open access in the special isse "Molecular Effects of Mutations in Human Genetic Diseases" of the "International Journal of Molecular Sciences".

Together with researchers from the PTB in Berlin, we systematically studied the influence of uncertainty in the input parameters of multiscale heart simulations on the resulting ECG. The work is published open access in the journal "Metrology".

Together with a team from the University of Szeged, IBT researchers have studied the reverse mode of the sodium-calcium exchanger for the function of the sinus node, the natural pacemaker of the heart. By combining biological experiments and computer simulations, evidence for a crucial role could be demonstrated.

Together with the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, the University of Oxford held a symposium on Dec 5 and 6. IBT and its clinical collaborators from Freiburg University presented their work and views on the synergy between computational modeling and machine learning and its clinical translation.

IBT researchers present the first functional 3D computer model of the human sinus node in the renowned Biophysical Journal. 
The structure of this natural pacemaker is crucial for successfully exciting the surrounding heart tissue.

The „Modeling the Cardiac Function“ conference hosted by the iHeart project took place in Cetraro from 30.9 to 2.10. An IBT member was there and presented our studies on the influence of boundary conditions on fluid dynamics simulations.

IBT members and collaborators from the Medical University of Graz investigated if and to what extent simplified methods and models can yield physiologically accurate results in electrophysiological atrial simulations regarding activation times and electrocardiograms (ECG) while reducing computational cost markedly at the same time. These analyses form the basis for extensive ECG-based simulation studies to e.g., generate large-scale datasets for machine learning approaches.

44th International Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference (EMBC) was held in Glasgow, Scotland,  from 11-15 July 2022.
Four representatives from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBT) participated in EMBC 22, with 3 full paper and one absract presentations.

The machine learning method to predict atrial fibrillation therapy success noninvasively from the ECG is one of the first approaches trained exclusively on data from computational models and benchmarked on real world clinical data.
[report] [paper]

The wish and application of the division and faculty management to appoint the recently retired Prof. Dössel as a Distinguished Senior Fellow was positively approved by the KIT. Prof. Dössel is involved, among other things, in 3 academies of science and in international professional societies as well as an expert in his field of medical technology.
Prof. Dössel and Prof. Ivers-Tiffée are highly regarded in science nationally and internationally and contribute significantly to the visibility of KIT.
Congratulations on these two special awards!

In cooperation with physicians from the St. Anne’s University Hospital, Brno, researchers at IBT showed that a dyssynchronous activation of the left ventricle is insufficient to result in a breakdown of the typical torsional contraction pattern in patients diagnosed with heart failure.

Olaf Dössel was appointed Fellow of the International Union for Physical and Engineering Sciences in Medicine (IUPESM) in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the international development of physical and engineering sciences in medicine.
The IUPESM is the worldwide umbrella organization of all scientific societies for biomedical engineering and medical physics.

Deborah Nairn successfully defended her PhD thesis „Multi-Modality Correspondence to Enhance Arrhythmogenic Atrial Substrate Identification - Guiding Persistent Atrial Fibrillation Ablation Therapy“ on April 14th, 2022.
Our heartfelt congratulations!

Carmen Martinez, scientist in the IBT, presented her research results in the EHRA Congress 2022 poster sessions under the title: “Impact of contact force on local impedance measurements in different atrial locations“. The conference took place in Copenhage between the 3rd and the 5th of April. The scientific program of this year was focused on “Getting back to the rhythm!”, referring also to the recovering of on-site conferences after the pandemic.

Laura Unger successfully defended her PhD thesis „Multimodal Characterization of the Atrial Substrate – Risks and Rewards of Electrogram and Impedance Mapping“ on February 22nd, 2022 and passed the doctoral examination with distinction. Our heartfelt congratulations!

Together with physicians at Freiburg University Hospital, IBT researchers present a method to non-invasively identify those atrial fibrillation patients at increased risk of heart failure. The method is based on machine learning on the electrocardiogram.

On April 11th and 12th 2022, the Institute of Biomedical Engineering is hosting a workshop which aims at teaching foundational coding to researchers, open to registration for all KIT members.

In the days of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner, scientific life was characterized solely by laboratory experiments, observations of nature and theoretical considerations, scientific essays and discourses. What has changed in the last 100 years? Nowadays, there is hardly a field in which research can be carried out without software.

Researchers of the IBT and the ISTM (Institute of Fluid Mechanics, KIT) have implemented a sequential coupling approach and found that the influence of the blood flow only slightly changes the deformation of the heart wall.

The solution of the inverse problem for ECG imaging (ECGI) is prone to detection of artifacts. A team around IBT researcher Steffen Schuler presented a method to avoid line-of-block artifacts to improve ECGI as a noninvasive diagnostic tool.

Using an electromechanical computational model, researchers at IEKM in Freiburg and IBT could quantify the effect that cardiac motion has on the ECG. This work is an important basis for faster ECG simulations in the future.

With the colloquium "Machine Learning for Medicine and the Role of Simulated Data", Dr.-Ing. Axel Loewe qualified as a university lecturer for the field "Modeling and Simulation for Medicine".

Last week, Steffen Schuler from our group successfully defended his thesis “Novel Methods to Incorporate Physiological Prior Knowledge into the Inverse Problem of Electrocardiography” Congratulations to our newest PhD! #phdlife #CardioTwitter.

Claudia Nagel participated at the Cardiac Physiome Workshop and at the annual meeting of the American heart association. She presented her latest results regarding the influence of the ventricular shape on simulated QRS complexes in the ECG and showed that an estimation of the left atrial fibrotic volume fraction based on simulated P waves was possible with an average error of 8.7%.

Olaf Dössel and Claudia Nagel participated in the first international workshop on metrology for virtual measuring instruments. Olaf Dössel held a keynote lecture about digital twins in medicine and Claudia Nagel talked about how fidelity of simulated ECGs can be assessed for a successful and meaningful application of simulated signals to clinical use cases.

The biannual Atrial Signals conference convened at KIT in September. More than 200 experts from both engineering and clinical communities joined discussions and presented the latest research.

We welcome Miriam Weiß as a new research scholarship holder in the group "Optical Technologies in Medicine".

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.

To the article

IBT researches in collaboration with the University Heart Centre Freiburg have published a paper comparing unipolar and bipolar voltage mapping for localisation of atrial substrate.

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A scientist of the IBT presented and discussed his results on the simulation of the propagation of photons in a blood vessel.

Researches of IBT, together with researchers from Bologna, Milan, and New York, published a review article on the current state of ECG-based potassium and calcium blood concentration measurements.

Publication of the investigation of the discretization error and its reduction in the geodesic length measurement.

Contributions by the university medical center Freiburg and IBT resulted in a paper on the identification of intraatrial arrhythmogenic sources using intracardiac electrogram characteristics.

IBT researchers published two novel methods for a non-invasive atrial flutter characterization together with physicians from the University of Leicester, the ABC Federal University, and the clinicians form the Städtisches Klinikum Karlsruhe in the journal “IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering”. Spatio-temporal recurrence quantification analysis methods were used to characterize and discriminate several atrial flutter mechanisms from the 12-lead ECG in a computational framework. Thanks to these methods, the duration of the invasive atrial mapping and ablation procedure might shorten significantly. The computational study was complemented and fortified by a clinical case used as a proof of concept.

Together with researchers from the University of Szeged, IBT researchers have published a review article on the role of the sodium calcium exchanger for the activity of natural pacemaker cells. These cells are located in the so-called sinus node of the heart and make for the rhythmic beating of our hearts. The review article integrates findings from experimental studies with computational modeling. It was published in the Frontiers in Pharmacology journal and is freely available (open access).

openCARP is an open cardiac electrophysiology simulator for in-silico experiments. Its source code is public and the software is freely available for academic purposes. openCARP is easy to use and offers single cell as well as multiscale simulations from ion channel to organ level. Additionally, openCARP includes a wide variety of functions for pre- and post-processing of data as well as visualization. The python-based CARPutils framework enables the user to develop and share simulation pipelines, i.e. automating in-silico experiments including all modeling/simulation steps.
openCARP is a joint effort of the Medical University of Graz (Gernot Plank), LIRYC Bordeaux (Ed Vigmond), U Freiburg (Gunnar Seemann) and KIT (Axel Loewe).

The sinus node is the natural pacemaker of the heart initiating each heart beat. Its pacemaking function results from the interplay of to cooperating systems: the so-called membrane clock and the calcium clock. The precise role of these two mechanisms is incompletely understood. Together with a group of experimental researchers from Szeged (Hungrary), the Cardiac Modeling group could now further elucidate the role of the calcium clock. A novel pharmacological agent allows to specifically block the sodim-calcium exchanger. IBT researcher could reproduce and further investigate this effect mechanistically in a computational model. By combining experiment and computer simulation, the crucial role of the sodium-calcium exchanger and the interplay with the membrane clock could be consolidated. The study explains how the natural pacemaker of the heart becomes robust and reliable through the interplay of the two systems calcium clock and membrane clock.

Axel Loewe from IBT was invited to present at the 10th "TRM Forum on the Computer Simulation of Cardiac Function“. The meeting brings together leading experts on computational modeling, experimental assessment, and clinical research in the field of cardiac arrhythmias. We contributed to this year’s theme „Towards the Digital Twin“ by presenting work that allows to build a biomechanical twin of an individual patient. In addition, the session "Atrial modeling & experimental data" was chaired by the IBT researcher.