Immersive Electrophysiology Catheter Ablation Procedure for Cardiology Training

Arrhythmia refers to abnormalities of the heartbeat and is a life threatening pathology. Although medication is often used as a first-line treatment, there are cumulative adverse effects over time. On the other hand, catheter ablation procedure offers better therapeutic outcomes for curing arrhythmia. Catheter ablation is a minimally invasive cardiac procedure, performed by electrophysiologists by navigating wire-like catheters in the heart for observing electrophysiology data of patients. Performing the procedure safely requires both in-depth electrophysiological knowledge and highly developed catheter navigation skills. Therefore procedure training requires even more effort to learn and master the required procedural skills. Literature analysis and expert interviews identified key procedural challenges, suggesting Extended Reality (XR) technologies as a promising approach to improve training. CardiacEPX is a VR application designed and developed to improve catheter ablation procedure training. CardiacEPX facilitates VR-based clinical case studies focused on knowledge acquisition and decision-making. The physical catheter integration with CardiacEPX supports catheter navigation and ablation training. User evaluation studies have conducted in two parts. The first study focused on the usability and user experience of CardiacEPX features, identifying potential training levels and effectiveness compared to the current training approaches. The second study focused on comparing VR controller interactions with physical catheter user experience during the ablation process. The results suggested that CardiacEPX is an effective as a training tool for electrophysiology fellows, and as an immersion for physiologists in cardiology training. The ablation feature using VR controllers proved effective for training focused on knowledge acquisition and decision making for early to mid fellows. The physical catheter setup is effective for catheter navigation and ablation training for advanced fellows. The CardiacEPX VR training application was identified as an effective method to address current gaps in electrophysiology training.