The music of arrhythmia

Translating irregular heartbeats could lead to new insights for computer scientists and medical diagnostics, according to an international project led by a Professor of Digital Media at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), which was presented today at the British Science Festival in Brighton (Friday 8 September). The project, ' music, computing and cardiology ' is seeking to understand whether musical representation of irregular heart beats could be used to characterise arrhythmia patterns. This could one day help discover disease subtypes and predict patient outcomes. Turning ECG data into music. The project takes ECG data recorded from arrhythmic hearts and represents the information using music rhythm notation, which then serves as a basis for new music compositions. When performed, the music accurately reproduces the rhythms of the irregular heartbeats, demonstrating the success of the transcription. In addition, the performed music makes the experience of arrhythmia visceral so that people who have not experienced arrhythmia can sense what it feels like.