Wrapped around the heart

摘要

Along-sought goal has been to observe, diagnose and treat dangerous disturbances to cardiac rhythm, an unfortunately common situation that occurs when electrical impulses in the heart become disordered. The major roadblock in the quest to understand and treat abnormal cardiac rhythms (arrhythmias) is that there is no straightforward approach for detailed inspection of the underlying electrical, metabolic and mechanical changes and the interactions between them. Writing in Nature Communications, Xu et al.have begun to address this deficit by developing three-dimensional membranes that uniquely conform to the heart surface, providing a platform for flexible arrays of multifunctional sensors.