The team is part of the newly accepted European project VP2HF (long title "Computer model derived indices for optimal patient-specific treatment selection and planning in Heart Failure"), a STREP project under the 7th Framework Program (ICT Call 10). The abstract of the proposal is given below. This project brings together 9 European partners, among which Inria is one of the main actors with St-Thomas Hospital / King's College London (project coordinator) and Philips Research. M3DISIM is more specifically in charge of a work-package that will provide estimation tools for patient-specific modeling.
Proposal abstract:
Heart failure (HF) is one of the major health issues in Europe affecting 6 million patients and growing substantially because of the ageing population and improving survival following myocardial infarction. The poor short to medium term prognosis of these patients means that, treatments such as cardiac re-synchronisation therapy and mitral valve repair can have substantial impact. However, these therapies, are ineffective in up to 50% of the treated patients and involve significant morbidity and substantial cost. The primary aim of VP2HF is to bring together image and data processing tools with statistical and integrated biophysical models mainly developed in previous VPH projects, into a single clinical workflow to improve therapy selection and treatment optimisation in HF. The tools will be tested and validated in 200 patients (including 50 historical datasets) across 3 clinical sites, including a prospective clinical study in 50 patients in the last year of the project. The key innovations in VP2HF that make it likely that the project results will be commercially exploited and have major clinical impact are; 1) all tools to process images and signals, and obtain the statistical and biophysical models will be integrated into one clinical software platform that can be easily and intuitively used by clinicians and tried out in the prospective clinical study and 2) by utilising a decision tree stratification approach, only the appropriate parts of the tool chain, that will add maximum value to the predictions will be used in individual patients, so that the more resource intensive parts will be used when they will add real value. We expect that the study results of substantial improved efficacy of decision making over current guidelines, and an integrated package that is used as part of clinical workflow will ensure the industrial project partners, in particular Philips, will develop project outputs into dedicated products that will have significant clinical impact.