Patient-specific volume conductor modeling for non-invasive imaging of cardiac electrophysiology.

Abstract

We propose a general workflow to numerically estimate the spread of electrical excitation in the patients’ hearts. To this end, a semi-automatic segmentation pipeline for extracting the volume conductor model of structurally normal hearts is presented. The cardiac electrical source imaging technique aims to provide information about the spread of electrical excitation in order to assist the cardiologist in developing strategies for the treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. The volume conductor models of eight patients were extracted from cine-gated short-axis magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. The non-invasive estimation of electrical excitation was compared with the CARTO™ maps. The development of a volume conductor modeling pipeline for constructing a patient-specific volume conductor model in a fast and accurate way is one essential step to make the technique clinically applicable.