2026 ECGI Data Challenge 

Table of Contents:

1. News

2. Summary

3. Objective

4. 2026 Challenge Description

5. Relevant Links

6. Instructions for Participation

7. Datasets

8. Key Dates

9. Abstract Submission

10. Rules and Regulations

11. FAQ

News:

9/28/2026: A slight change of plans: We are pivoting during this inaugural year of the ECGI data challenge. We will be considering the submission period between October 1st to November 10th to be the unofficial testing period, in which participants can submit their solutions and be scored, but those scores will not be officially recorded or ranked for the final challenge. This period is meant to allow both participants and organizers to gather feedback on the challenge, the scoring, the metrics used, and the process. We will then hold a formal workshop at the 2026 ECGI summit which will launch the official testing submission period. During this workshop, we will have presentations describing the datasets, the challenge organization and motivation, and provide an opportunity to work together on refining our submissions. We will also provide an opportunity for participants who submit during the testing period to present (should they wish to), giving an opportunity for further feedback and refinement of your methods and approaches. The organizing committee would like to thank everyone who has expressed interest so far, especially for your patience as we all learn how to run an event like this together. We hope this will be the first in a series of ECGI community events to further the state of the art of this field.

Summary:

We are excited to announce the 2026 consortium for ECGI data challenge! We seek to provide an opportunity to showcase your ECGI workflow and compete against others in the field on a set of centralized datasets. Our hope is to generate novel innovations, collaborations, and energy among the ECGI community. Challenge winners will be announced at the 2026 ECGI summit (November 2026) in Valencia, Spain. We have an excellent cohort of datasets from contributors in Utah (USA), Bordeaux (France), Bratislava (Slovakia). Auckland (New Zealand), and Halifax (Canada).

Objective:

The goal of this challenge is to bring together a variety of datasets and provide a standardized testing bed for comparison of ECGI techniques. We aim to provide incentive for further improvement and take a survey of the state of the art in ECGI applications. To that end, we intend to summarize the results of this study into a publication which can be referenced in future ECGI improvement efforts. To aid in this, we also encourage all participants to 1) make their code open-source whenever possible to aid in contemporary  and future validation efforts and 2) contribute if invited to the summary publication following the challenge.

We will split the datasets described below into a training, and testing set. The entire training set (inputs and ground truth) will be provided to challenge participants. The testing set will be kept hidden. Later in the challenge we will release the inputs to the testing set and open a submission site for answers on the test set. The winners of the challenge will be the ones who score highest on the testing dataset. Throughout the challenge we will post a leaderboard.

2026 Challenge Description:

Premature ventricular contractions are a phenomena where activation initiates spontaneously at a point in the ventricles of the heart rather than through the standard conductive pathway initiating at the sinus node. Similarly, premature ventricular beats can be initiated through electrical stimulation of the myocardium. Tracking the location of either natural PVCs or paced ventricular beats has been a common validation task for ECGI techniques. The focus of the score metric for the 2026 ECGI Data Challenge will be the localization the side of initiation for either natural PVCs or paced ventricular beats across the datasets. When present, invasively recorded electrogram data will be compared to inverse reconstructions, but the ranking of submissions will be based on their localization of the pacing site or PVC initiation location. The datasets organized for this year's challenge contain a mix of natural PVCs, paced beats, clinical, and pre-clinical data. Thanks again to all of the contributing groups and organizations.

Links:

• Challenge Repo (all the code for the challenge, with example scrips and the scoring scripts): https://github.com/CECGImaging/2026_ECGI_Data_Challenge

• Challenge Registration Link :  https://forms.gle/JLcF8q2Eun6FsEma7

• Abstract Submission Link: https://forms.gle/FDeiJUVdqLhWqgLo9

• Challenge datasets (you will need to register an EDGAR account)  : https://edgar.sci.utah.edu/2026/05/02/2026-ecgi-data-challenge/

• Challenge Submission Site: https://ecgi26.ndp.utah.edu/

Instructions:

1. Register for the challenge either as an individual or a team:   https://forms.gle/JLcF8q2Eun6FsEma7

2. Acquire the training data and testing data from EDGAR: https://edgar.sci.utah.edu/2026/05/02/2026-ecgi-data-challenge/

3. Set up an account on https://ecgi26.ndp.utah.edu/ (this is where you submit your solutions)

   • Visit the site and select a logon option (we suggest CI logon or ORCID)

   • Follow the prompts to finish making your account.

   • Once logged on, you should see a banner that indicates which email address is associated with your account: "Logged in as <email>". This is the email you should register with in the registration form.

4. Submit an abstract describing your ECGI solutions by November 10th: https://forms.gle/FDeiJUVdqLhWqgLo9

5. Participate in the unofficial testing period:

   • Submit your results on the testing data by November 10th (https://ecgi26.ndp.utah.edu/)

     • Participants who submit during the testing period may have the opportunity to present at the ECGI summit.

6. Register and attend the 2026 ECGI summit

   • plan to attend the Wednesday ECGI challenge session

7. Submit your final ECGI solutions by the challenge end date (Early spring, to be announced during the ECGI summit)

8. Consider contributing to the followup proceedings paper after the conference

Datasets:

• • Utah torso tank dataset:
    Simultaneous epicardial (240 electrode sock) and torso tank (192 electrodes) recordings during a langgendorf canine heart preparation. Data consists of signals recorded during intramural ventrcular pacing, sinus rhythm, and atrial pacing. Data is recorded from two separate preparations.

  • Auckland In Vivo Porcine dataset:
    Simultaneous epicardial (239 electrode sock) and torso surface (170 electrodes) recordings during epicardial paced beats in a porcine in-vivo model. Data was collected from 4 subjects with 5-15 pacing sites per subject .

  • Bordeaux Torso Tank dataset: (this data will not be included in the 2026 edition of the challenge. We are working to make it ready for future challenges)
    Simultaneous epicardial (128 electrode sock) and torso tank (256 electrodes) recordings during a langgendorf porcine heart preparation. Data consists of signals recorded during intramural ventricular pacing, and sinus rhythm.

  • Bratislava Human PVC Ablation Dataset
    Body surface and 12 lead ECG recordings from 13 human subjects who underwent ablation for premature ventricular contractions along with the ablations sites used to terminate PVCs.

  • Halifax Clinical Epicardial Pacing Dataset
    Body surface mapping data during epicardial mapping and pacing of a patient during a clinical VT mapping procedure.
    
    

Key Dates:

• Release of the challenge and dataset: May 5th 2026

• Submit challenge abstract: November 10th 2026

• Test Data Released: October 1st 2026

• Initial date to submit on the test set (unofficial period): October 1st 2026

• Final date to submit on the test set (unofficial period): November 10th 2026

• Challenge Workshop: November 25th 2026 (at the ECGI summit)

• Testing Submission period: November 30th 2026 -- (final deadline to be announced at ECGI summit)

Abstract Submission:

Abstracts should be submitted as PDFs, including a title page (with title, all authors and author affiliations, acknowledgments, and funding sources) and a single page that describes the approach used for the challenge submission. Abstracts may include figures and tables as the authors see fit. Abstract may include references on a separate page. Limit the body of the abstract (not including title page or references) to 1 page. 

Rules:

These rules and guidelines, as well as other challenge information, will be updated as needed. This is our first year running the challenge, have patience and let us know if there are problems. To be ranked in the challenge, it is expected that at least one member of each team will attend the conference in person. If unforeseen circumstances prevent someone from your team from being able to attend, please reach out to us, and we will see if there is an accommodation we can arrange. We do not guarantee that non-in-person participants can be ranked.

FAQ:

Q: Can I use this data outside of the context of the challenge?
A: Yes, but you must cite the relevant papers for the data source and the challenge proceedings paper (to be published after the challenge). If you intend to publish on this data before the challenge paper is published, please contact the challenge organizers: jake.bergquist@utah.edu

Q: What do I do if I have technical challenges with the data?
A: Email the organizers, and we will try to assist ( jake.bergquist@utah.edu). Be patient as there are not many of us.