Digital Beats

Ventricular tachycardia is the medical term for an abnormally rapid heartbeat originating in the heart’s lower chambers. It might last a few seconds without causing problems, but longer bouts can cause unconsciousness and even death. If the site of the electrical misfiring is identified, it can be specifically and surgically destroyed by cardiac ablation. But pinpointing the site is difficult, the procedure can be lengthy and success isn’t guaranteed. Now there’s a way to identify the offending area more accurately and even test if the ablation will work before attempting it in the patient. Created from imaging data collected during a specialised form of 3D MRI, the digital twin of a patient’s heart (shown) allows visualisation of the flow of electricity with each beat revealing the problematic site (labeled VT). In a recent clinical trial of such digital twin-directed ablation, all ten patients were arrythmia-free more than a year later.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Video from work by Jonathan Chrispin and Adityo Prakosa, and colleagues
• Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA
• Video originally published with no restrictions – hence published here with as Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in New England Journal of Medicine, April 2026