Arrhythmical Risk Indicator (ARI) – cardiovascular images to reduce the need of pacemakers

The Arrhythmic Risk Indicator (ARI) project got support last year from Norges forskningsråd through a Qualification grant managed by Validé AS to validate the technology and explore its implementation in the current market. The project is closing now in December, and we are happy to see that it will have the opportunity to collect more data to further test the model. ARI gives the possibility to detect risk of cardiac arrest in patients with arrhythmias associated to previous cardiac failure, making more precise decision-making when it comes to implement pacemakers to patients at risk.

Cardiovascular diseases are still the main cause of death globally, and the only way to prevent a cardiac arrest is the use of a pacemaker (ICD). But this procedure comes with high costs and other risks for health. Cardiologists can track how many times the device has been activated in the body to avoid a cardiac arrest. In many cases, the ICD is never activated, meaning that those patients could have survived without the device. Currently, there is no way to predict which of those patients will need the ICD and which ones won't, and so the ICD is implanted in most of the cases. The ARI technology has the potential to become a new biomarker for prognosis, helping cardiologists with decision-making, and giving the MR scans the ability to offer much more information of the same MR image. A scan that can offer this service to medical specialists will have a notably increased value and save costs and efforts to the health system.