Electrical imaging of the heart

Abstract

We give an overview of "cardiac electrical imaging", which is a generalization of the ECG in which more information is acquired by using a larger array of electrodes to record a sequence of "electrical images". These image sequences can be measured noninvasively on the body surface or invasively on or in the heart muscle itself. Here we briefly discuss the motivation for cardiac electrical imaging, we describe some relevant background electrophysiology to indicate how cardiac electrical imaging can provide information about the heart' s health, and then we give an overview of the technical challenges that arise in displaying, representing, and analyzing these image sequences.