Depth Attenuation Degree Based Visualization for Cardiac Ischemic Electrophysiological Feature Exploration

Biomed Res Int. 2016:2016:2979081. doi: 10.1155/2016/2979081. Epub 2016 Nov 27.

Abstract

Although heart researches and acquirement of clinical and experimental data are progressively open to public use, cardiac biophysical functions are still not well understood. Due to the complex and fine structures of the heart, cardiac electrophysiological features of interest may be occluded when there is a necessity to demonstrate cardiac electrophysiological behaviors. To investigate cardiac abnormal electrophysiological features under the pathological condition, in this paper, we implement a human cardiac ischemic model and acquire the electrophysiological data of excitation propagation. A visualization framework is then proposed which integrates a novel depth weighted optic attenuation model into the pathological electrophysiological model. The hidden feature of interest in pathological tissue can be revealed from sophisticated overlapping biophysical information. Experiment results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for intuitively exploring and inspecting cardiac electrophysiological activities, which is fundamental in analyzing and explaining biophysical mechanisms of cardiac functions for doctors and medical staff.

MeSH terms

  • Body Surface Potential Mapping / methods*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Electrophysiologic Techniques, Cardiac / methods
  • Heart Conduction System / diagnostic imaging*
  • Heart Conduction System / physiopathology*
  • Humans
  • Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods
  • Models, Cardiovascular*
  • Myocardial Ischemia / diagnostic imaging*
  • Myocardial Ischemia / physiopathology*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • User-Computer Interface