Heart failure is a major public health problem, with limited treatment options. Many patients with heart failure develop mechanical dyssynchrony, with associated further deterioration in heart function. Some patients with heart failure and dyssynchrony benefit from cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), but a third or more of heart failure patients selected for treatment with CRT with conventional criteria fail to benefit significantly from it. The primary goals of this project are: 1) development and evaluation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and image analysis methods to better predict outcome of the use of cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) for heart failure with dyssynchrony, and 2) use of the imaging-derived data for computer modeling of the effects of the dyssynchrony on cardiac function and its response to CRT. As heart failure is an important clinical condition, and as current means used to predict response to CRT have limited accuracy, this project is potentially clinically very significant.
Heart failure with mechanical dyssynchrony is a relatively common and serious clinical condition;while it may respond to treatment with cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT), many patients selected for CRT by conventional criteria fail to benefit significantly from it. The goals of this project are to: 1) explore the potential use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data for improved prediction of response to CRT, and 2) use the MRI-derived data together with a computer model of the cardiovascular system to study the relative roles of different factors in the mechanical effects of dyssynchrony in failure, and in th response (or lack thereof) to CRT.