Marco J. W. Götte

Personal Statement My research focusses on developing and combining state-of-the-art cardiac MRI technology - including advanced pulse sequences, A.I. image processing & analysis and MRI-compatible devices - to provide a deeper understanding of clinical cardiac arrhythmia mechanisms and systemic heart diseases, and using these technologies to guide and improve patient-specific therapies including MRI-guided cardiac interventions. To translate these new advanced technologies from bench to bedside, a unique, MRI-compatible, explanted working heart model has been developed. I have increasingly engaged with world leading clinical researchers and engineers in electrophysiology and cardiac imaging (CMR), augmented by on-going pre-clinical and clinical collaborations. This increased focus on tangible clinical translation has driven my research endeavors towards three main areas of interest, specifically: 1) Constructing and analyzing highly detailed, closely validated, 3D image datasets of the heart, to aid pre-procedure ablation target planning and peri-procedural guidance during cardiac intervention; 2) Developing, testing and clinically validating new (software) tools and devices for the purpose of MRI-guided cardiac interventions; 3) Performing MRI-guided cardiac interventions (i.e. ablations and biopsies) in vitro and in-vivo. Tying these three areas of translation together is an ongoing drive to improve diagnostic accuracy and enable radiation-free cardiac intervention for a variety of heart diseases, which continues to be a major focus of funding and output. Biosketch Marco Götte studied Medicine at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (MD in 1992). Between 1992 and 1995 he did cardiology internships at Erasmus MC and VUmc. In 1996 he started his PhD (supervisor prof.dr. A.C. van Rossum) followed by his training in Cardiology at VUmc in 2001. In 2005 he was registered as a cardiologist. Between 2005-2008 he was staff member Cardiology at VUmc and involved in cardiac MRI, cardiac mechanics and body surface mapping. In 2009 he was asked to set up a full training in cardiology (A-training) prat the Haga Teaching Hospital, The Hague. For almost a decade he was chief trainer Cardiology (A-opleider, Haga Teaching Hospital, The Netherlands). In the same period, he established a cardiac MRI (CMR) research program consisting of 2 main projects, 1) CMR and electrical modification focused on MRI compatible pacemakers and pacing, and 2) CMR and electrical manipulation (3D ECG imaging and cardiac ablation). For this program he raised in total 1.4 mil. Euros via private partners. Two PhD students successfully completed their thesis. Since 2013 he is also pioneering the field of interventional cardiac MRI. In 2018 he was asked to return to AmsterdamUMC - location VUmc to set up an MRI-guided cardiac intervention program that led to the first MRI-guided right heart catheterization in 2018 and the first in-human MRI-guided cardiac ablation in 2020. He is a specialist in cardiac MRI, cardiac mechanics and heart failure and an internationally well-recognized cardiac MRI authority (level III certified). Over the years he has published >100 scientific papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals. Currently, he is directing a Cardiac MRI research group including 4 PhD students, 2 post-docs and multiple students (Medicine, Biomedical engineering en Technical Medicine). He has a broad scientific network and several (inter)national research partners, including Technical Univeristy Twente (W. Brink, G. Dagnino), TU Delft (Q. Tao, S. Weingartner) , St Thomas Hospital / Kings College London (S. Niederer, M. Bishop), Royal Free Hospital London (D. Knight), University of Pennsylvania (V. Ferrari, S. Nazarian) and McGill University Health Centre, Montreal (M. Friedrich). Between 2010 – 2019 he was program director of the Dutch annual national Cardiac MRI symposium (2010 – 2019). He has been successful in establishing innovative long-term private-public partnerships (2013-2017) with different industrial partners and is an experienced project manager. For many year years he has served as member of the European Association Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) exam board - cardiac MRI. Currently, he is the clinical lead for the Cardiology Research Unit (CRU) at the VUmc location, part of CURIUS. 100+ peer-reviewed papers are here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=gotte+mj+%5Bau%5D