A wearable cardiac activity mapping system

According to the British Heart Foundation, heart and circulatory diseases cause a quarter of all deaths in the UK. Electrocardiography (EEG) is a routine technique for diagnosis of cardiac dysfunction, but suffers from poor spatial resolution. As a result, the source of aberrant activity is determined today using invasive procedures. New tools that map cardiac activity in a non-invasive, real time fashion and with high spatial resolution, would have a major impact.
The objective of this project is to build such a tool. We propose a large area (10s of cm per side) electrode array connected via onboard electronics and wireless, yielding a powerful system for non-invasive, high resolution measurements of cardiac activity. The array will be fabricated by printing techniques and integrated with commercial electronics and power. The system will be validated in volunteers and patients during cardiac surgery, where it will produce real-time maps of the electrophysiological activity of the heart. As such, this project will lead to the development of an urgently needed medical diagnostic for cardiology.
The project leverages expertise in cutaneous electrophysiology arrays in the Bioelectronics Laboratory and the result of an MRes project aimed to prototype arrays and address issues of spatial resolution. For the PhD project, the integration of the array with on board electronics for signal acquisition and wireless transfer to a computer will be targeted. The questions here relate to the appropriate architecture of the acquisition chain, the choice of wireless system that will yield the required performance and the required power autonomy. We will seek to manufacture system prototypes that are compatible with monitoring the heart in a doctor's surgery or an ambulance. Here the expertise of Prof. Ronan Daly in additive manufacturing will be critical. The student will evaluate different printing techniques (inkjet, screen printing, fused deposition modelling) for developing the electrode arrays and different integration and packaging techniques (zero insertion force connections, anisotropic conducting adhesives) for developing systems that consist of disposable electrode arrays connected to reusable electronics. The system will be tested in human volunteers and benchmarked against clinical and ambulatory EEG systems. In the final year of the PhD, we will seek to validated this system in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. The idea will be to conduct intraoperative recordings, to correlate activity measured non-invasively with our system placed on the chest, with recordings obtained from inside the heart, using a cardiac catheter.
The end result of this project will be a validated system that images cardiac activity with high resolution in a non-invasive fashion. While similar systems are being developed to measure muscle activity and control prosthetic limbs, there is currently no such system for the heart. It will allow to visualise the propagation of waves of electrical activity of the heart as it beats, something that can only be achieved with invasive techniques. The project will also answer fundamental questions regarding the spatial resolution of cutaneous electrophysiology of the heart, as well as the correlation between electrophysiology measured on the heart and on the chest (the so-called inverse problem).

The impact of the CDT in Connected Electronic and Photonic Systems is expected to be wide ranging and include both scientific research and industry outcomes. In terms of academia, it is envisaged that there will be a growing range of research activity in this converged field in coming years, and so the research students should not only have opportunities to continue their work as research fellows, but also to increasingly find posts as academics and indeed in policy advice and consulting.

The main area of impact, however, is expected to be industrial manufacturing and service industries. Relevant industries will include those involved in all areas of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), together with printing, consumer electronics, construction, infrastructure, defence, energy, engineering, security, medicine and indeed systems companies providing information systems, for example for the financial, retail and medical sectors. Such industries will be at the heart of the digital economy, energy, healthcare, security and manufacturing fields. These industries have huge markets, for example the global consumer electronics market is expected to reach $2.97 trillion in 2020. The photonics sector itself represents a huge enterprise. The global photonics market was $510B in 2013 and is expected to grow to $766 billion in 2020. The UK has the fifth largest manufacturing base in electronics in the world, with annual turnover of £78 billion and employing 800,000 people (TechUK 2016). The UK photonics industry is also world leading with annual turnover of over £10.5 billion, employing 70,000 people and showing sustained growth of 6% to 8% per year over the last three decades (Hansard, 25 January 2017 Col. 122WH). As well as involving large companies, such as Airbus, Leonardo and ARM, there are over 10,000 UK SMEs in the electronics and photonics manufacturing sector, according to Innovate UK. Evidence of the entrepreneurial culture that exists and the potential for benefit to the UK economy from establishing the CDT includes the founding of companies such as Smart Holograms, PervasID, Light Blue Optics, Zinwave, Eight19 and Photon Design by staff and our former PhD students. Indeed, over 20 companies have been spun out in the last 10 years from the groups proposing this CDT.

The success of these industries has depended upon the availability of highly skilled researchers to drive innovation and competitive edge. 70% of survey respondents in the Hennik Annual Manufacturing Report 2017 reported difficulty in recruiting suitably skilled workers. Contributing to meeting this acute need will be the primary impact of the CEPS CDT.

Centre research activities will contribute very strongly to research impact in the ICT area (Internet of Things (IoT), data centre interconnects, next generation access technologies, 5G+ network backhaul, converged photonic/electronic integration, quantum information processing etc), underpinning the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and Digital Economy themes and contributing strongly to the themes of Energy (low energy lighting, low energy large area photonic/electronics for e-posters and window shading, photovoltaics, energy efficient displays), Manufacturing the Future (integrated photonic and electronic circuits, smart materials processing with photonics, embedded intelligence and interconnects for Industry 4.0), Quantum Technologies (device and systems integration for quantum communications and information processing) Healthcare Technologies (optical coherence tomography, discrete and real time biosensing, personalised healthcare), Global Uncertainties and Living with Environmental Change (resilient converged communications, advanced sensing systems incorporating electronics with photonics).