しかし、ニューヨーク州ニューイングランド・ジャーナル・オブ・メディシン（New England Journal of Medicine）で水曜日に報告された結果は、航空宇宙など他の産業で長く使われてきたこの技術が、より良い健康のためにも活用できるのではないかと、医師たちがますます検討するようになっていることを背景にしている。
大学の心臓専門医で、研究には関与していなかったマイアミ大学（University of Miami）のジェフリー・ゴールドバーガー博士（Dr. Jeffrey Goldberger）は、15年前により原始的な試作を試し、新しい知見を称賛した。「私たちが思い描いていたのはまさにこれです」と同博士は語った。
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タイガー・ウッズ、ライダーカップのキャプテン職を断り、健康を取り戻すために身を引く
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Doctors have long used 3D models, both physical and computer-generated ones, to simulate disease and practice techniques. But Hopkins biomedical engineer Natalia Trayanova said true digital twins predict how a real organ can react to different treatments. Her lab is pioneering colorful interactive models developed with an advanced MRI scan and other data from each patient.
“We treat the twin before we treat the patient,” Trayanova said. “Did it work? And if it did, are there new things that arise” that will require more or different care?
The heart’s electrical system powers our heartbeat. Ventricular tachycardia is a super-fast heartbeat triggered when an electrical wave short-circuits in the organ’s bottom chambers, the ventricles, and prevents them from pumping blood out to the body.
“You see this heart that is basically quivering,” Trayanova said.
Medication can help but the main treatment is ablation, when doctors thread catheters to the heart to burn misfiring tissue. But it’s a bit trial-and-error, as patients spend hours under anesthesia while doctors determine where to aim. Repeat ablations are common, and many patients have an implanted defibrillator as backup.
Enter Trayanova’s digital twins of patients’ ventricles. Colors swirl on a computer screen – blue, green, yellow and orange – showing how the heart’s electrical wave moves across the chamber’s healthy areas before getting stuck on damaged tissue. It’s trapped in a circular motion that she compares to the swirl of a hurricane.
“It allows me to recreate the functioning of the patient’s organ and then predict what is the best way to ablate,” she said.
The technology locates a dysfunctional region where the electrical wave repeatedly hits. Virtually ablating it will show if that solves the problem or if another arrhythmia forms that also will need zapping. “Then we poke it again,” she explained.
Trayanova’s team created customized ablation targets for each of the 10 study participants. Cardiologists transferred them to a mapping system they use as a guide and aimed just at those targets instead of hunting their own.
More than a year later, eight patients had no arrhythmias while two experienced only a single brief episode while they were healing – better than the treatment’s typical 60% success rate, said Dr. Jonathan Chrispin, a Hopkins cardiologist and the study’s lead author. All but two also stopped their anti-arrhythmia medicine.
More importantly, cardiologists may burn away less tissue by targeting “specifically the areas that we think are critically important,” Chrispin said. “We could potentially make these procedures shorter, safer, more effective.”
The Hopkins team hopes to study the digital twin approach in a larger study with other hospitals, and has begun a trial using it to treat a more common type of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation. Other researchers are studying digital twins for cancer care.
AP通信のヘルス・科学部門は、Howard Hughes Medical Instituteの科学教育部門およびRobert Wood Johnson Foundationの支援を受けています。APは、掲載内容のすべてについて単独で責任を負います。
患者の不規則な心拍を修正するために、医師はまずそのデジタル「ツイン」の動作を検査した
ワシントン（AP）— 科学者たちは、患者の病んだ心臓を極めて精密に仮想複製し、危険な不整脈をこれらのデジタル「ツイン（分身）」で遮断できることを確認することで、医師たちが実際の治療をより良く行う方法を学べるようにした。
これらのカスタムモデルの最初期の臨床試験の一つは、治療が非常に難しいことで知られる心室頻拍のケアを改善できる可能性があることを示唆している。同疾患は米国で年間約30万人の突然の心停止の主因とされる、主要な不整脈だ。
この研究はジョンズ・ホプキンス大学の研究者らによるもので、小さな第一歩だった。米食品医薬品局（FDA）は、デジタルツイン技術が治療の指針となることを10人の患者に限って認めており、より大規模な研究が必要になる。
しかし、ニューヨーク州ニューイングランド・ジャーナル・オブ・メディシン（New England Journal of Medicine）で水曜日に報告された結果は、航空宇宙など他の産業で長く使われてきたこの技術が、より良い健康のためにも活用できるのではないかと、医師たちがますます検討するようになっていることを背景にしている。
大学の心臓専門医で、研究には関与していなかったマイアミ大学（University of Miami）のジェフリー・ゴールドバーガー博士（Dr. Jeffrey Goldberger）は、15年前により原始的な試作を試し、新しい知見を称賛した。「私たちが思い描いていたのはまさにこれです」と同博士は語った。
Doctors have long used 3D models, both physical and computer-generated ones, to simulate disease and practice techniques. But Hopkins biomedical engineer Natalia Trayanova said true digital twins predict how a real organ can react to different treatments. Her lab is pioneering colorful interactive models developed with an advanced MRI scan and other data from each patient.
“We treat the twin before we treat the patient,” Trayanova said. “Did it work? And if it did, are there new things that arise” that will require more or different care?
The heart’s electrical system powers our heartbeat. Ventricular tachycardia is a super-fast heartbeat triggered when an electrical wave short-circuits in the organ’s bottom chambers, the ventricles, and prevents them from pumping blood out to the body.
“You see this heart that is basically quivering,” Trayanova said.
Medication can help but the main treatment is ablation, when doctors thread catheters to the heart to burn misfiring tissue. But it’s a bit trial-and-error, as patients spend hours under anesthesia while doctors determine where to aim. Repeat ablations are common, and many patients have an implanted defibrillator as backup.
Enter Trayanova’s digital twins of patients’ ventricles. Colors swirl on a computer screen – blue, green, yellow and orange – showing how the heart’s electrical wave moves across the chamber’s healthy areas before getting stuck on damaged tissue. It’s trapped in a circular motion that she compares to the swirl of a hurricane.
“It allows me to recreate the functioning of the patient’s organ and then predict what is the best way to ablate,” she said.
The technology locates a dysfunctional region where the electrical wave repeatedly hits. Virtually ablating it will show if that solves the problem or if another arrhythmia forms that also will need zapping. “Then we poke it again,” she explained.
Trayanova’s team created customized ablation targets for each of the 10 study participants. Cardiologists transferred them to a mapping system they use as a guide and aimed just at those targets instead of hunting their own.
More than a year later, eight patients had no arrhythmias while two experienced only a single brief episode while they were healing – better than the treatment’s typical 60% success rate, said Dr. Jonathan Chrispin, a Hopkins cardiologist and the study’s lead author. All but two also stopped their anti-arrhythmia medicine.
More importantly, cardiologists may burn away less tissue by targeting “specifically the areas that we think are critically important,” Chrispin said. “We could potentially make these procedures shorter, safer, more effective.”
The Hopkins team hopes to study the digital twin approach in a larger study with other hospitals, and has begun a trial using it to treat a more common type of irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation. Other researchers are studying digital twins for cancer care.
AP通信のヘルス・科学部門は、Howard Hughes Medical Instituteの科学教育部門およびRobert Wood Johnson Foundationの支援を受けています。APは、掲載内容のすべてについて単独で責任を負います。