Trayanova Lab collaboration paper awarded the 2025 James T. Willerson Award in Clinical Science

The publication entitled, "Personalized Heart Digital Twins Detect Substrate Abnormalities in Scar-Dependent Ventricular Tachycardia", produced by a collaboration between St. George's University Hospital and ADVANCE at JHU, has been awarded the prestigious 2025 James T. Willerson Award in Clinical Science. The first author, Michael C. Waight, will be recognized during the 2025 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in New Orleans between November 7-10, 2025.

Briefly, the study created heart digital twin models from 18 patients with scar-dependent VT undergoing catheter ablation. Contrast-enhanced cardiac magnetic resonance images were used to reconstruct finite-element meshes, onto which regional electrophysiological properties were applied. Rapid-pacing protocols were used to induce VTs and to define the VT circuits. Predicted optimum ablation sites to terminate all VTs in the models were identified. Digital twin–predicted sites displayed a higher prevalence of abnormal and prolonged electrograms compared with nonpredicted sites and accurately identified regions of conduction slowing. These results show that the underlying technology and methods have great promise for improving substrate-based ablation to treat ventricular tachycardia

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