3-DIMENSIONAL SIMULATION OF EPICARDIAL POTENTIALS USING A MICROCOMPUTER-BASED HEART-TORSO MODEL

Previous cardiac simulation studies have focused on simulating the act ivation isochrones and subsequently the body surface potentials. Epica rdial potentials, which are important for clinical applications as wel l as for electrocardiography inverse problem studies, however, have us ually been neglected. This paper presents a procedure of simulating ep icardial potentials using a microcomputer-based heart-torso model with real geometry The heart model developed earlier which was composed of more than 60,000 cell units was used in this study. To simulate the e picardial potentials, an epicardial surface model which enclosed the w hole heart was constructed. The heart model, together with the epicard ial surface model, are mounted in an inhomogeneous human torso model. Electric dipoles, which are proportional to the spatial gradient of th e action potential, are generated in all cell units. These dipoles giv e rise to a potential distribution on the epicardial surface, which is calculated by means of the boundary element method. The simulated epi cardial potential maps during a normal heart beat and in patients with left bundle branch block (LBBB) are in close agreement with those rep orted in the literature.