Diagnosing heart function and illness, as well as testing new medications for heart problems, has traditionally been a difficult and time-consuming endeavour. However, current methods to study heart cell contraction and calcium handling are labour-intensive, prone to error, and require expensive, specialized equipment.
BeatProfiler: Rapid Heart Cell Function Analysis”
A novel technology developed by Columbia Engineering researchers directly tackles these issues. BeatProfiler is the first system to combine the analysis of various heart function indicators, such as contractility, calcium handling, and force output, into one tool, It is a comprehensive software that automates the analysis of heart cell function from video data. This reduces the possibility of errors and speeds up the process considerably.
With BeatProfiler, researchers may quickly and objectively test medications that alter heart function, in addition to differentiating between diseases and their severity levels.
The research demonstrated that BeatProfiler could reliably and quickly analyze cardiomyocyte function, up to 50 times faster than current methods. It picked up on minute variations in the designed heat tissue force response that other instruments could overlook.
The group is aiming to increase BeatProfiler’s functionality for novel uses in cardiac research, such as medication development and a wide range of illnesses that impact the heart’s pumping function. They are evaluating BeatProfiler’s efficacy in additional in vitro cardiac models, such as various synthetic heart tissue models, to make sure it can be applied to a broad range of research problems.
