A Cardiac Translational Research Implementation Program (CTRIP; P20HL101397 "Primary ECG-MRI Risk Stratification") based at Johns Hopkins University and led by Dr. Joao Lima of the Division of Cardiology is developing new strategies for assessing patient risk of sudden cardiac death in heart failure progression.
To do this, researchers are using a novel ECG analysis algorithm known as the Strauss-Selvester QRS Score to assess myocardial infarct size and risk of sudden death. If successful, this ECG-based screening approach may prove to be a non-invasive, lower cost alternative for risk assessment in the setting of sub-clinical heart disease. To facilitate their research, CTRIP investigators are using the CVRG ECGrid Toolkit to manage and share data between the four collaborating clinical sites (University of Pennsylvania, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Hospital, and Johns Hopkins University). This toolkit allows CTRIP researchers to access and analyze 3 and 12 lead Holter data collected at each site in an interactive manner. The CVRG software engineering team has also implemented a web service that performs fast calculation of the Strauss-Selvester QRS score from large ECG data sets.