The team of researchers from the “signal processing” team are focused on mapping the heart's electrical activity.

• An electrocardiogram of the future.

The signal processing team is using a new non-invasive, three-dimensional mapping method. The patient is fitted with a jacket with more than 250 electrodes covering the entire surface of the thorax and hence collecting surface electrical activity point by point. This system, which has no intracorporeal probe and therefore is non-invasive, provides a panoramic view of the whole heart's activity from a single heartbeat. It highlights the electrophysiological mechanisms of heart arrhythmias in order to make early diagnoses, understand the condition and guide therapies. This requires solving the opposite problem, so that the cardiac electrical activity recorded on the surface of the chest can be reconstructed from the activity on the surface of the heart. This is the cardiology of tomorrow, with non-invasive cardiac mapping, possibly coupled with non-invasive treatment also, based on ultrasound or radiation as used in oncology.

• Solving the inverse problem.

The team is also working on mathematical algorithms to solve the inverse problem. From observing desynchronization arrhythmias, researchers are trying to understand the causes behind these phenomena.

• Simulation and navigation system

The development of a simulator, SIMRIC, to handle electrophysiology catheters on a mechanical and informatic model, provides clinicians with realistic arrhythmia scenarios reproducing the corresponding electrical signals. This device provides industrial stakeholders with research and training applications.