I first thought of this project when I was working as a cardiology tech at a hospital years ago. I was tasked with reading and monitoring EKGs all day long to make sure that patients were not having any heart issues. It was interesting and challenging work and I realized pretty quickly that the little squiggle lines on the screen tell a much bigger story than what meets the eye. Each squiggle line, in each different lead, tells a different story about what the heart is doing at that moment in an electrical, mechanical, and hemodynamic sense. This is not only fasinating but extremely complex and very difficult to visualize and understand. I wondered why has there not been a translation from the squiggle to the visual? If we are doing this all day long in our heads to decipher what is going on, why not build a tool that can do this for us? This is where the idea for Optikal EKG was born.

This is an ongoing project for me. I have started with walkthrough modules. These modules aim to teach the user the basics of the electrical conduction system components of the heart and how they are represented in an EKG. The other walkthrough module that I have implemented is a visualization of the 12 leads of an EKG and their viewpoint on the heart. The goal here is to help understand how the spatial orientation of the leads lead to differences in the EKG waveform. I believe that building this mental model will help students and professionals cultivate a deeper understanding of how and EKG is really looking at the heart and what it is telling us. The roadmap for the project is vast, with big goals ahead. Realtime animations of differnent heart rhythms, with deep dives on the pathology that leads to each one. Interactive quizzes, and with the largest goal of realtime visualization of real heart data from an EKG. This is a project that I am very passionate about and I am excited to see where it goes ❤️