ELECTRICAL DEFIBRILLATION OPTIMIZATION - AN AUTOMATED, ITERATIVE PARALLEL FINITE-ELEMENT APPROACH

To date, optimization of electrode systems for electrical defibrillati on has been limited to hand-selected electrode configurations, In this paper we present an automated approach which combines detailed, three -dimensional (3-D) finite-element torso models with optimization techn iques to provide a flexible analysis and design tool for electrical de fibrillation optimization, Specifically, a parallel direct search (PDS ) optimization technique is used with a representative objective funct ion to find an electrode configuration which corresponds to the satisf action of a postulated defibrillation criterion with a minimum amount of power and a low possibility of myocardium damage, For adequate repr esentation of the thoracic inhomogeneities, 3-D finite-element torso m odels are used in the objective function computations, The CPU-intensi ve finite-element calculations required for the objective function eva luation have been implemented on a message-passing parallel computer i n order to complete the optimization calculations in a timely manner, To illustrate the optimization procedure, it has been applied to a rep resentative electrode configuration for transmyocardial defibrillation , namely the subcutaneous patch-right ventricular catheter (SP-RVC) sy stem, Sensitivity of the optimal solutions to various tissue conductiv ities has been studied, Results for the optimization of defibrillation systems are presented which demonstrate the feasibility of the approa ch.