REGIONAL REGULARIZATION OF THE ELECTROCARDIOGRAPHIC INVERSE PROBLEM -A MODEL STUDY USING SPHERICAL GEOMETRY

This study examines the use of a new regularization scheme, called reg ional regularization, for solving the electrocardiographic inverse pro blem. Previous work has shown that different time frames in the cardia c cycle require varying degrees of regularization, This reflects diffe rences in potential magnitudes, gradients, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) , and locations of electrical activity, One might expect, therefore, t hat a single regularization parameter and a uniform level of regulariz ation may also be insufficient for a single potential map of a single time frame because in one map there are regions of high and tow potent ials and potential gradients, Regional regularization is a class of me thods that subdivides a given potential map into functional ''regions' ' based on the spatial characteristics of the potential (''spatial fre quencies''), These individual regions are regularized separately and r ecombined into a complete map, This paper examines the hypothesis that such regionally regularized maps are more accurate than if all region s were taken together and solved with an averaged level of regularizat ion, In a homogeneous concentric spheres model, Legendre polynomials a re used to decompose a torso potential map into a set of submaps, each with a different degree of spatial variation, The original torso map is contaminated with data noise, or geometrical error or both, and reg ional regularization improves the epicardial potential reconstruction by up to 25% [relative error (RE)], Regional regularization also impro ves the reconstructed location of peaks. A practical goal is to extend the application of this method to the realistic torso geometry, but b ecause Legendre decomposition is limited to geometries with spherical symmetry, other methods of map decomposition must be found, Singular v alue decomposition (SVD) is used to decompose the maps into component parts, Its individual submaps also have different levels of spatial va riation; moreover, it is generalizable to any vector, does not require spherical symmetry, and is extremely efficient numerically, Using SVD decomposition for regional regularization, significant improvement wa s achieved in the map quality in the presence of data noise.