Cardiovascular disease (CVD) has a significant impact on the European society in terms of mortality, morbidity and allied healthcare costs. The opportunity of multi-scale modelling spanning, sub-cellular level up to whole heart is to improve CVD outcomes by providing a consistent, biophysically-based framework for the integration of the huge amount of fragmented and inhomogeneous data currently available. However, multi-scale models have not yet been translated into clinical environments mainly due to the difficulty of personalising biophysical models. The challenge of the euHeart project is to directly address this need by combining novel ICT technologies with integrative multi-scale computational models of the heart in clinical environments to improve diagnosis, treatment planning and interventions for CVD.

To meet this challenge we will bring together leading European physiological modelling and cardiac groups to develop, integrate and clinically validate patient-specific computational models of the cardiac physiology and disease-related processes. The main outcome of euHeart will be an open source framework for the description and representation of normal and pathological multi-scale and multi-physics cardiovascular models, using the international encoding standards. In addition, a library of innovative tools for the execution of the biophysical simulations, the personalisation of the models and the automated analysis of multi-modal images are developed.

Evidence of clinical benefit will be collected to quantify potential impact for a number of significant CVD's namely, heart failure, cardiac rhythm disorder, coronary artery disease and valvular and aortic diseases. Each of the selected clinical applications provides a complementary focus for the resulting integrated model of cardiac fluid-electro-mechanical function. The consortium contains a mix of academic leadership, clinical sites, and industrial partners ensuring exploitation of the wealth of models.

For further information, please visit:
http://www.euheart.org

Project co-ordinator:
Philips Technologie GmbH

Partners:

• INRIA, Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique
• King's College London
• Academisch Medisch Centrum bij de Universiteit van Amsterdam
• Polydimensions GmbH
• Universitat Pompeu Fabra
• The University of Sheffield
• Hospital Clinico San Carlos de Madrid Insalud
• Philips Iberica S.A.
• Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM)
• Volcano Europe SA/NV
• The Chancellor, Master and Scholars of the University of Oxford
• HemoLab B.V.
• Deutsche Krebsforschungszentrum (DKFZ)
• Berlin Heart GmbH
• Universität Karlsruhe (Technische Hochschule)
• Philips Medical Systems Nederland BV

Timetable: from 06/2008 – to 05/2012

Total cost: € 19.053.465

EC funding: € 13.900.000

Programme Acronym: FP7-ICT

Subprogramme Area: Virtual physiological human

Contract type: Collaborative project (generic)

---

Related news article:

• euHeart Project by CORDIS News
• Royal Philips Electronics Announced the euHeart Project

---