Though technically advanced, modern cardiac monitoring, pacing, and defibrillating devices obtain a pretty simple picture of the heart’s electrical activity. To truly map out the electrophysiology of the heart you’d need to wrap it in a mesh of electrodes that can provide a continuous 3D view of electrical activity.
A research team headed by John A. Rogers of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Igor Efimov at Washington University in St. Louis, created a 3D printed sleeve with an array of electrodes that can sense the beating heart of a rabbit. The sleeve can be printed to fit each heart’s individual anatomy, and it expands and contracts along with the organ’s movement. It’s applied without any sutures or stapling, but by simply wrapping it around the heart. Besides monitoring the heart, the same electrodes can potentially also be used to provide pacing and defibrillation as necessary. Here’s a video of the beating rabbit heart wrapped in the electrode glove:
Study in Nature Communications: 3D multifunctional integumentary membranes for spatiotemporal cardiac measurements and stimulation across the entire epicardium…
Washington University, St. Louis: 3-D printer creates transformative device for heart treatment…