Clara Sales, BSiCoS group researcher, presented two abstracts at the EHRA Conferenceand Julia Ramírez was invited to be part of the jury members Clara Sales presented two abstracts at the EHRA 2023 conference focused on the analysis of electrocardiograms (ECGs) from patients suffering from bradycardia who had an indication for pacemaker implantation. Patients had been treated with either the conventional right ventricular pacing (RVP) or the recently proposed left bundle branch area pacing (LBBAP). RVP has been the treatment of…
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A line of research that seeks innovative solutions based on the analysis of data collected routinely in patients with cardiomyopathies and infarction Professionals from the Arrhythmia Unit of the Cardiology Service of the Hospital Clínico Universitario Lozano Blesa, led by Javier Ramos Maqueda, and from the BSICOS research group, led by Esther Pueyo Paules and Ana Mincholé Lapuente, launch a research project to create digital twins of the heart in patients with cardiomyopathies and heart attacks. A cardiac digital twin…
Read moreThe “Tercer Milenio” Awards have been recognizing the Aragonese research community for eight years, from the youngest to the most consolidated trajectories, with knowledge transfer, innovation and scientific dissemination. The Paraninfo of the University of Zaragoza hosted the event in which the researcher Julia Ramírez García, from the BSiCoS group, received the "Young Research Talent" award for her work in biomedical signal processing. In addition, the Government of Aragon has awarded her the Aragón Investiga Prize for Young Researchers "William…
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Computing in Cardiology (CinC) is an international scientific conference that has been held annually since 1974. The last conference was held in Tampere (Finland) at the beginning of September and our researchers presented their latest work there. Maxi Rosales: "Ventricular Conduction System Modeling for Electrophysiological Simulation of the Porcine Heart" Depolarization sequences triggering mechanical contraction of the heart are largely determined by the cardiac conduction system (CS). Many biophysical models of cardiac electrophysiology still have poor representations of the CS.…
Read moreJulia Ramírez, BSiCoS group researcher, participated in the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology. She was invited to present her latest work on Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD) prediction using a new index, TMV, derived from a single heartbeat from a single lead on the electrocardiogram (ECG) signal. Her talk was part of the "Late-Breaking Basic and Translational Science" session, where Julia showed her results demonstrating that TMV is the only ECG marker measured at rest that associates with malignant…
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Diez de nuestros jóvenes investigadores e investigadoras han participado este año en la XI Jornada destinada a dar visibilidad a las líneas de trabajo que se están desarrollando en el Instituto de Investigación en Ingeniería de Aragón (I3A) de la Universidad de Zaragoza y que se enmarca en la Jornada del I3A, celebrada el 16 de junio en la capital aragonesa. Como miembros de BSiCoS, ocho de ellos mostraron su trabajo en la sesión de posters y dos en las…
Read moreJulia Ramírez presented a poster at the European Human Genetics Conference describing new findings on rare variants modulating resting heart rate and their importance in cardiovascular risk. In addition, in the first days of June, she participated in the ERAS World Congress 2022 (Enhanced Recovery After Surgery). She was invited to give a talk describing the potential of artificial intelligence algorithms for predicting and reducing risk. Previously, in May, Julia Ramírez gave an oral presentation at the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS 2022) showing the added value…
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El temblor patológico es una de las principales causas de discapacidad en la población adulta. En la actualidad no existen tratamientos que reviertan enfermedades que causan el temblor patológico como la enfermedad de Parkinson o el temblor esencial. Por este motivo, es necesario encontrar vías de tratamiento del temblor que estas patologías causan, de tal manera que los pacientes puedan realizar con normalidad actividades de la vida diaria. Hasta ahora, los principales tratamientos para el temblor son fármacos (que suelen…
Read more¿Nos echas una mano? Se buscan voluntarios para un estudio de investigación sobre depresión y estrés
Necesitamos voluntarios para un estudio de investigación sobre depresión y estrés que desarrollan el Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria de Aragón (IIS Aragón) y el Instituto de Investigación en Ingeniería de Aragón (I3A) de la Universidad de Zaragoza. En estudios anteriores hemos comprobado el potencial de marcadores fisiológicos, relacionados con la frecuencia cardiaca, la morfología del pulso cardiaco, la sudoración, la cadencia del habla, etc. para identificar sujetos con depresión. Nuestro objetivo ahora es estudiar la viabilidad de monitorizar la depresión mediante…
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Maxi Rosales: In silico Electrophysiological Evaluation of Scaffold Geometries for Cardiac Tissue Engineering Human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hiPSC-CMs) cultured on bio-printed scaffolds have shown promising results for cardiac function restoration. Nevertheless, pro-arrhythmicity favoured by reduced conduction velocity of the transplanted constructs has been poorly assessed. Here, they investigate the impact of the scaffold geometry on the electrical activation properties of hiPSC-CMs cultures. Electrophysiological models of hiPSC-CMs and the Finite Element Method were employed for computational simulation of hiPSC-CMs…
Read moreRaquel Bailón y Esther Pueyo participaron en el Observatorio en Red para el Estudio y la Prevención de la Muerte Súbita en el Deporte (PREMUBID) Raquel Bailón y Esther Pueyo, investigadoras del grupo BSICoS, dieron una charla sobre la importancia del análisis del electrocardiograma (ECG) en deportistas y el estudio de marcadores de riesgo de muerte súbita cardíaca el 5de noviembre en el Observatorio Científico en Red para el Estudio y la Prevención de la Muerte Súbita en el Deporte…
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The BSICoS Group researchers, Spyridon Kontaxis y Konstantinos Mountris, participated in the 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society. It was held virtually from October 31 to November 4 Spyridon Kontaxis talked about the Added Value of Nonlinear Cardiorespiratory Coupling Indices in the Assessment of Depression The present study investigates the differences in autonomic nervous system (ANS) function and stress response between patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) and healthy subjects by measuring changes…
Read moreAllí, acaba de presenter su trabajo “Eigenvector-based spatial ECG filtering improved QT delineation in stress test recordings” Explica Cristina Pérez que, actualmente, se estudian las características de las diferentes curvas que componen la señal de electrocardiograma (ECG), así como sus puntos característicos, con la idea de definir biomarcadores sin la necesidad de recurrir a pruebas invasivas. Entre ellos, un mayor tiempo de adaptación del intervalo QT ante cambios abruptos de la variabilidad del ritmo cardiaco (HR) se ha definido como…
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La investigadora del grupo BSiCoS, Raquel Bailón, participa en el congreso de la Sociedad Española de Cardiología (SEC) en la sesión dedicada a los avances en señales biomédicas Raquel Bailón habló de los biomarcadores del sistema nervioso autónomo (SNA) en cardiología durante el congreso de la SEC que se celebra en Zaragoza. Las alteraciones autonómicas desempeñan un papel fundamental en el desarrollo y prognosis de muchas enfermedades cardiovasculares: infarto de miocardio, insuficiencia cardiaca, muerte súbita, isquemia... En estas alteraciones se…
Read moreLaura García, member of the BSiCoS Group, presents her research at the Spanish Cell Biology Society (SEBC) Congress Age is one of the most relevant predisposing risk factors for cardiovascular diseases. Aged hearts undergo structural and functional changes that are orchestrated at the molecular level. The molecular basis is poorly characterized in humans due to the scarcity of tissue samples and human models. We aim to study transcriptome dynamics of the aging human left ventricle (LV) according to both chronological…
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Siete investigadores e investigadoras del grupo BSiCoS han participado en la Jornada de JóvenesI3A, con la presentación de seis pósteres y una contribución oral a un encuentro que reunió a más de 50 jóvenes que desarrollan su trabajo en el Instituto de Investigación en Ingeniería de Aragón. Presentación oral Laura García: Envejecimiento cardiaco humano: transcriptómica y desarrollo de modelos celulares de envejecimiento Pese a la relevancia de la edad como factor de riesgo de las enfermedades cardiovasculares, sus bases moleculares…
Read morePablo Laguna, BSiCoS researcher, gave a talk about Physiologically driven biomedical signal processing at the Faculty of Physics at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí (UASLP) in Mexico. During his online conference, he explaned how biomedical signals convey information about biological systems and can emanate from sources of as varied origins as electrical, mechanical or chemical. In particular, biomedical signals can provide relevant information on the function of the human body. This information, however, may not be apparent in…
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Jennifer Riccio, Esther Pueyo and Pablo Laguna participated in Atrial Signals congress that took place at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Campus South, Karlsruhe, Alemania, from Septembre 23 to 25. Researcher Jennifer Riccio explained her work about "Analysis of unipolar electrogram eigenvalue dispersion for the detection of atrial fibrosis". Atrial fibrosis plays a meaningful role in the pathogenesis of atrial fibrillation (AF). Areas with peak-to-peak amplitude of bipolar electrograms (b-EGMs) lower than 0.5 mV are detected as scar tissue and…
Read moreAtrial Signals 2021: Modeling the aging of the heart Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are responsible for more than four million deaths per year in Europe. The single major risk factor for CVD is age, which leads to a progressive decline in the physiological functions of the body, with very notable effects on the heart. These effects are associated with enhanced predisposition to cardiac arrhythmias. In this presentation, integrative approaches combining in silico modeling with in vitro cell and tissue analysis and…
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Raquel Bailón, researcher at the BSICOS group, was at the R + D + i Conference for the Mobility of the Future. There, she presented her work on “Detection of stress and drowsiness in the driver through the processing of physiological signals”. Between 20-30% of traffic accidents are due to drowsiness, fatigue or stress, which are closely related to the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The activity of the ANS can be monitored non-invasively by processing biomedical signals,…
Read more“Ventilatory Thresholds Estimation Based on ECG-derived Respiratory Rate” is the work presented by Diego García, BSiCoS researcher, at the Compunting in Cardiology Conference, held in Brno (Czech Republic) between 12 and 15 September. Young Researcher Award (YIA) finalist. The purpose of this work is to study the feasibility of estimating the first and second ventilatory thresholds (VT1 and VT2, respectively) by using electrocardiogram (ECG)-derived respiratory rate during exercise testing. The ECGs of 25 healthy volunteers during cycle ergometer exercise test…
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Our young researcher, Cristina Pérez, has been the winner of the Young Researcher Award (YIA) at the STAFF congress held in Sirolo (Italy), from Septembre 1 to 4, for her work entitled “Characterization of impaired ventricular repolarization by quantification of QT delay after heart rate changes in stress test” Cristina Pérez explains in her research work, how increased spatio-temporal heterogeneity in ventricular repolarization is related to cardiac instabilities. Slowed adaptation of the QT interval to sudden abrupt changes in heart…
Read moreAging is the main risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. In humans, cardiac aging remains poorly characterized. Most studies are based on chronological age (CA) and disregard biological age (BA), the actual physiological age (result of the aging rate on the organ structure and function), thus yielding potentially imperfect outcomes. Deciphering the molecular basis of ventricular aging, especially by BA, could lead to major progresses in cardiac research. We aim to describe the transcriptome dynamics of the aging left ventricle (LV)…
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Electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring is traditionally used to screen patients who suffer from or are likely to develop cardiovascular disease. WECARMON has come up with a comfortable armband for non-invasively monitoring cardiac and respiratory parameters long-term. Patients suffering from chronic inflammatory lung conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have a higher risk of developing heart problems due to obstructed airflow from the lungs. In addition, the condition obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS), which is associated with abnormal breathing during…
Read moreMorphological changes in pulse rate could provide complementary information to that extracted from the pulse rate variability on the response of the cardiovascular and nervous systems of subjects exposed to hyperbaric environments. The peripheral activation produces a vasoconstriction that increases the pulse width and area. However, the pulse width of the anacrotic phase seems to be a better marker in the variation of peripheral vascular resistance than the pulse width. Pelaez-Coca, M D; Hernando, A; Lozano, M T; Sanchez, C;…
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Jesús Lázaro, researcher of the BSiCoS group of the I3A, at the University of Zaragoza, participated in the Neocom Conference, held this March and organized by the Association of Telecommunications Students of the University of Zaragoza. He spoke about his research work around biomedical signal processing, how it can be used to improve the current understanding of the functioning of biological systems, conditions related to the cardiovascular, respiratory, and autonomic nervous systems, as well as their interactions. In addition, he…
Read moreChronic kidney disease affects more than 10% of the world population. Changes in serum ion concentrations increase the risk for ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death, particularly in end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients. We characterized how T wave amplitude, duration and morphology descriptors change with variations in serum levels of potassium and calcium and in heart rate, both in ESRD patients and in simulated ventricular fibers. Electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings from twenty ESRD patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD) and pseudo-ECGs (pECGs)…
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We investigated the ability of time-warping-based ECG-derived markers of T-wave morphology changes in time (dw) and amplitude (da), as well as their non-linear components (dNLw and dNLa), and the heart rate corrected counterpart (dw,c), to monitor potassium concentration ([K+]) changes (Δ[K+]) in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients undergoing hemodialysis (HD). We compared the performance of the proposed time-warping markers, together with other previously proposed [K+] markers, such as T-wave width (Tw) and T-wave slope-to-amplitude ratio (TS/A), when computed from standard…
Read moreElectrocardiogram (ECG) has been regarded as a source of respiratory information with the main focus in the estimation of the respiratory rate. Although little research concerning the estimation of tidal volume (TV) has been conducted, there are several ECG-derived features that have been related with TV in the literature, such as ECG-derived respiration, heart rate variability or respiratory rate. In this work, we exploited these features for estimating TV using a linear model. 25 young (33.4 ± 5.2 years) healthy male volunteers were recruited for performing…
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The BSiCoS group will be at the I3A Conference, where we will participate in the Young Researchers Meeting: - Pablo Armañac: The capacity of the baroreflex as an identification index of ICU patients prepared for weaning - Cristina Pérez: From the stress test to the prediction of sudden cardiac death using non-invasive markers - Saúl Palacios: Periodic dynamics of repolarization as a predictor of sudden death in patients with chronic heart failure Date: Friday, December 11 Time: 9 am -…
Read moreThis year, we will virtually attend the XXXVII Annual Congress of the Spanish Society of Biomedical Engineering (CASEIB) between November 25 and 27. Five of our researchers will defend the work carried out in our research group. CASEIB is a national reference forum for exchanging knowledge and experiences and promoting R + D + i in Biomedical Engineering. This is the BSiCoS group participation program: November 25 “Delay between QT and RR in stress test records as an indicator of…
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Researchers from the BSiCoS group, at the Engineering Research Institute of Aragon (I3A), University of Zaragoza, work from Engineering and Mathematics to know the functioning of the heart, see how its activity is when it is healthy and how it changes when a heart attack occurs, provide clinical specialists with the tools that they need to improve patient care. They do it through computation in cardiology, with the creation of a virtual heart that allows the computer to reproduce the…
Read moreNext Monday and Tuesday, November 16 and 17, we will attend the XIV CIBER-BBN Annual Conference. Our research group will be represented by Pablo Armañac and Alejando Alcaine, who will present their research work at this meeting that, this year, will be online. Pablo Armañac will participate with his work "Autonomic nervous system surrogates, cardiopulmonary coupling and respiratory parameters as predictors of successful weaning in mechanically ventilated patients (ANS-RESP-WEANING)", on Monday at 12:45. Alejandro Alcaine, will speak on…
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Cardiomyocytes’ geometry and connexin 43 (CX43) amount and distribution are structural features that play a pivotal role in electrical conduction. Their quantitative assessment is of high interest in the study of arrhythmias, but it is usually hampered by the lack of automatic tools. In this work, we propose a software algorithm (Myocyte Automatic Retrieval and Tissue Analyzer, MARTA) to automatically detect myocytes from fluorescent microscopy images of cardiac tissue, measure their morphological features and evaluate the expression of CX43 and its degree of lateralization. The proposed software is based on the generation…
Read morePhD contract and topic A PhD contract (former FPI program) is offered for a PhD position at the Biomedical Signal Interpretation and Computational Simulation (BSICoS) group of the Aragón Institute of Engineering Research, University of Zaragoza. The PhD thesis is associated with the research grant “Towards improved management of cardiovascular diseases by integrative in silico-in vitro-in vivo research into heart’s structure, function and autonomic regulation”, funded by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, with reference PID2019-105674RB-I00. As part of his/her…
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