The EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) has awarded EUR 14 million to a 4-year project, euHeart, for the improvement of the diagnosis, therapy and treatment of cardiovascular disease (CVD). The consortium comprises public and private partners from 16 research, academic, industrial and medical organisations from 6 European countries.

Different parts of the euHeart project, financed by the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), are co-ordinated by Philips Research, King's College London and the University of Oxford; the consortium also includes participants in Germany, Spain, France and Belgium. The project is part of the Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) initiative, which aims to produce a unified computer model of the entire human body as a single complex system.

The euHeart consortium focuses on developing technologies for the diagnosis and treatment of heart conditions such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, heart rhythm disorders and congenital heart defects. Specifically, it aims to develop computer models of the heart on multiple scales, from the molecular level to that of the whole organ, that can be adapted to individual patients.

The computer models will be functional as well as structural, incorporating clinical knowledge of how CVD affects the heart at each level. It is hoped that this will lead to the development of tools designed to predict outcomes for different therapies or treatments; if models can be personalised to individual patients, therapy and treatment could be equally personalised.

A person suffering from CVD could benefit from having a personalised computer model of their heart because it would address their own peculiarities. For example, the electrical activity in every patient's heart is subtly different; for certain conditions a computerised model reflecting the patient's unique heart structure and function would enable doctors to test the results of destroying different areas of tissue before they have to operate.

Anyway, the euHeart project intends to develop its models using novel information and communication technologies together with existing clinical data such as computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound scans, as well as measurements of blood flow and blood pressure in the coronary arteries and electrocardiograms. Gene defects in individual patients could also be taken into account.

Pre-diagnosed conditions such as heart arrhythmias would likely be the first to benefit from advances in computer modelling of CVD. Heart failure, coronary artery disease and diseases of the heart valves and aorta would also be major clinical focus areas.

It will additionally establish a shared library of innovative tools for biophysical simulations, model personalisation and automated image analysis.