Bio

Dr. Vasiliki Bikia is a postdoctoral researcher at the Byers Center for Biodesign, Stanford. She received her Advanced Diploma degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH), Greece, in 2017, and her Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2021. Her Ph.D. research addressed the clinical need for providing non-invasive tools for cardiovascular monitoring leveraging machine learning and physics-based numerical modeling. In particular, she developed and tested novel healthcare algorithms for major biomarkers including central blood pressure, stroke volume, left ventricular elastance and arterial stiffness. At Stanford, she contributes to the Stanford Spezi framework, designing and prototyping the Spezi Data Pipeline tool for enhanced digital health data accessibility and analysis workflows. Her work includes exploring smartwatches for arrhythmia detection in children and integrating physical activity data for personalized care with major pharma companies.

Her research interests include health algorithms, digital biomarkers, machine learning, non-invasive monitoring, and the application of large language models for personalized healthcare, predictive analytics, and enhancing patient-clinician interactions.

Stanford Advisors

Contact

  • Academic
    bikia@stanford.edu
    University - Scholar Department: Med/BMIR Position: Postdoctoral Scholar
    University - Other Teaching/Research Department: Surgery - Vascular Surgery Position: Visiting Instructor

Additional Info

All Publications

  • Utility of smart watches for identifying arrhythmias in children. Communications medicine Zahedivash, A., Chubb, H., Giacone, H., Boramanand, N. K., Dubin, A. M., Trela, A., Lencioni, E., Motonaga, K. S., Goodyer, W., Navarre, B., Ravi, V., Schmiedmayer, P., Bikia, V., Aalami, O., Ling, X. B., Perez, M., Ceresnak, S. R. 2023; 3 (1): 167

    Abstract

    Arrhythmia symptoms are frequent complaints in children and often require a pediatric cardiology evaluation. Data regarding the clinical utility of wearable technologies are limited in children. We hypothesize that an Apple Watch can capture arrhythmias in children.We present an analysis of patients ≤18 years-of-age who had signs of an arrhythmia documented by an Apple Watch. We include patients evaluated at our center over a 4-year-period and highlight those receiving a formal arrhythmia diagnosis. We evaluate the role of the Apple Watch in arrhythmia diagnosis, the results of other ambulatory cardiac monitoring studies, and findings of any EP studies.We identify 145 electronic-medical-record identifications of Apple Watch, and find arrhythmias confirmed in 41 patients (28%) [mean age 13.8 ± 3.2 years]. The arrythmias include: 36 SVT (88%), 3 VT (7%), 1 heart block (2.5%) and wide 1 complex tachycardia (2.5%). We show that invasive EP study confirmed diagnosis in 34 of the 36 patients (94%) with SVT (2 non-inducible). We find that the Apple Watch helped prompt a workup resulting in a new arrhythmia diagnosis for 29 patients (71%). We note traditional ambulatory cardiac monitors were worn by 35 patients (85%), which did not detect arrhythmias in 10 patients (29%). In 73 patients who used an Apple Watch for recreational or self-directed heart rate monitoring, 18 (25%) sought care due to device findings without any arrhythmias identified.We demonstrate that the Apple Watch can record arrhythmia events in children, including events not identified on traditionally used ambulatory monitors.

    View details for DOI 10.1038/s43856-023-00392-9

    View details for PubMedID 38092993

    View details for PubMedCentralID 4937287

  • Arterial pulse wave modeling and analysis for vascular-age studies: a review from VascAgeNet AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSIOLOGY-HEART AND CIRCULATORY PHYSIOLOGY Alastruey, J., Charlton, P. H., Bikia, V., Paliakaite, B., Hametner, B., Bruno, R., Mulder, M. P., Vennin, S., Piskin, S., Khir, A. W., Guala, A., Mayer, C. C., Mynard, J., Hughes, A. D., Segers, P., Westerhof, B. E. 2023; 325 (1): H1-H29

    Abstract

    Arterial pulse waves (PWs) such as blood pressure and photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals contain a wealth of information on the cardiovascular (CV) system that can be exploited to assess vascular age and identify individuals at elevated CV risk. We review the possibilities, limitations, complementarity, and differences of reduced-order, biophysical models of arterial PW propagation, as well as theoretical and empirical methods for analyzing PW signals and extracting clinically relevant information for vascular age assessment. We provide detailed mathematical derivations of these models and theoretical methods, showing how they are related to each other. Finally, we outline directions for future research to realize the potential of modeling and analysis of PW signals for accurate assessment of vascular age in both the clinic and in daily life.

    View details for DOI 10.1152/ajpheart.00705.2022

    View details for Web of Science ID 001008201900001

    View details for PubMedID 37000606

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC7614613

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4660-1560