HeartSciences
Next-Gen ECG for Significantly Improved Heart Disease Screening

It is crucial to identify symptoms of heart disease as early as possible to avoid an emergency. With modern advancements in image-based testing devices, cardiologists today can detect even the most minor details of heart disease. However, when it comes to primary care, symptoms are often overlooked due to a lack of such advanced testing tools in that venue.

In primary care centers, heart disease symptoms, risk factors and EKG/ECG testing are the only tools available to physicians. While conventional ECGs are effective at identifying electrical heart problems like A-fib, they are significantly less sensitive at detecting coronary artery disease or structural heart conditions, such as an enlarged heart or leaking valve. Physicians often only have risk factors on which to refer patients for advanced tests, such as echocardiograms and CT angiograms. The lack of effective tools leads to missing patients that do have heart disease and referring patients for expensive testing that do not have heart disease.

This is where HeartSciences may be able to make a world of difference, with its MyoVista^® Wavelet ECG (wavECG^™) cardiac testing device. MyoVista^® is an ECG device that uses AI to detect changes in the heart’s diastolic function caused by almost all types of heart disease, thus significantly improving frontline screening while making the cardiology referral process much more efficient thus lowering costs for the healthcare system.

“MyoVista^® is a Next-Gen ECG that provides doctors with all current conventional ECG information while also incorporating advanced AI-based technology that detects cardiac dysfunction caused by heart disease.” stated Andrew Simpson, Chairman and CEO, HeartSciences.

MyoVista^® uses an AI-based algorithm to provide physicians diagnostic information related to a form of cardiac dysfunction (diastolic dysfunction) which is induced by most types of heart disease as well as age related cardiac dysfunction. This information can provide primary care physicians much more effective information to determine whether a patient should receive further evaluation and possible treatment.
To ensure the AI-algorithms are able to analyze all aspects of the ECG signal, MyoVista® also applies an advanced form of signal processing called continuous wavelet transform (CWT) to extract frequency information from the heart’s electrical waveform as additional inputs to the AI-based algorithm. In addition, MyoVista incorporates many functional features, such as a user-friendly touch screen with a high resolution 1920x1080 display, data storage capacity that can store more than 100,000 test records, and the ability to export test results as PDF files. HeartSciences has participated in multiple clinical studies in North America. The results of these studies were published in articles in the leading peer reviewed cardiology publication in the United States, The Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

An interesting study was undertaken in Australia by a world-leading physician. HeartSciences’ technology was compared with existing referral methods. The study conclusion determined that MyoVista not only outperformed current referral methods but could reduce unnecessary echocardiograms caused by less effective referral methods by almost 50%. Similarly, a publication from the European Heart Journal in 2020 evaluated MyoVista’s ability to detect calcium levels in coronary arteries. The article noted that AI-based algorithms using patient ECG data along with additional clinical variables focused on predicting Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC) scores can go beyond the current referral procedures in identifying patients at risk of suspected coronary artery disease. A recent abstract presented at The American College of Cardiology annual conference demonstrated their ability to develop a practical algorithm for the MyoVista that could identify patients at risk of a major cardiac event within the next three years.

“The big diagnostic gap in heart disease is early detection by front line physicians such as primary care. AI is creating a revolution in the diagnostic capabilities of an ECG, fast forward 10 years and every ECG will have these new capabilities. “ says Simpson.

HeartSciences is currently focused on obtaining FDA clearance. The company expects to submit their De Novo application for FDA review in the current fiscal year.