Programmatic Approach to Real-Time Monitoring and Analysis of Electrocardiogram Signals in Zebrafish

Abstract

Heart disease is the leading cause of mortality in the U.S. with approximately 610,000 people dying every year. The research into effective therapies for cardiac diseases is currently being held back due to the time and resources required to analyze raw test data for diagnostic purposes, such as electrocardiogram (ECG) readings. In this paper, a novel programmatic approach to expediting the process of analyzing raw ECG data and reporting the diagnostic results of the analysis to the user is presented. This program was initially designed to filter and diagnose a variety of heart conditions in zebrafish (Danio rerio) to facilitate heart disease research. However, as presented in this paper, the program was specifically designed so that future updates to expand its diagnostic capabilities beyond zebrafish would be relatively simple to complete with a basic understanding of the LabVIEW programming language. This solution holds promise to aid in the execution of numerous studies of heart disease, drug screening, stem cell-based therapy validation, and regenerative medicine.