Real-time Monitoring of Zebrafish ECG with Automated Aberrant Pattern Detection

Abstract SensoriisInc is a company thatdevelops evidence based sensing solutions to support biological investigations and address health care problemsThe goal of this NIH STTR grant with University of WashingtonUWis to provide a flexible system to assess cardiac electrical activities in zebrafish modelssupporting heart disease studies and drug screeningUnlike humanszebrafish hearts can fully regenerate following cardiac injurythereby providing a tractable model system to study endogenous heart regenerationZebrafish have also proven to be an ideal vertebrate model system for phenotype based screening owing to their physiological similarity to mammalsFurtherzebrafish model enables a forward genetic approach to reveal the genetic basis and underlying molecular mechanisms of numerous heart diseasesThe conventional setup for cardiac phenotype acquisition in zebrafishi eelectrocardiogramECGinvolves sedation causing variation in functionalityTo datethere is no system which can offer cardiac phenotype monitoring in freely swimming zebrafishnot to mention for multiple fish simultaneouslyIn this contextwe propose and developa wireless flexiblejacketto be worn by zebrafish for real time assessment of electrical cardiac phenotypesnamely ECGanda simple yet novel apparatus to collect ECG of multiple awake fishOur devices provide pivotal platforms for cardiac phenotype related investigationsThe obtained data will be processed by smart algorithms to detect aberrant ECG patterns in real timeThe proposed systems will facilitate related studies using zebrafish modelsFurtherthe success of this platform also paves the avenue for regenerative medicine and developmental biology studies as well as stem cell based therapies for cardiac repairIn Phase I of this STTR grantwe will develop ia polymer based microelectrode arrayMEAjacket that could be comfortably worn by the zebrafish and provide wireless ECG acquisitionand iiachamber apparatus for simultaneous recording of ECG in awake fishMachine learning based programs with embedded algorithms will be developed to distinguish ECG patterns such as heart rateST and QT intervalsthus can identify anomaliessuch as arrhythmias or prolonged QTsFor proof of conceptthe system will be validated and compared PROJECT NARRATIVE In this Phase I STTR grantSensoriisInc and the University of Washington will developa world first wireless flexible membrane for zebrafish with a micro electrode arrayMEAfor ECG measurement and electronics for wireless powering and communication with an external unita simple yet novelchamber apparatus to acquire ECG ofawake fishandMachine learning based programs to process the data and detect desired patternsThe goal is to facilitate and reduce cost and time of cardiac phenotype based screening in the zebrafish modelssupporting numerous studiesThe proposed system also pave the avenue for heart disease investigations and stem cell based therapy validation using zebrafish models