A 3-D finite element cardiac model and its application to body surface Laplacian mapping

A new 3-D finite element model of cardiac electrical conduction has been developed. The purpose of this study was to construct a simple but physiologically reasonable heart model and to simulate body surface Laplacian maps (BSLMs). The heart model consists of 29,109 elements in a cubic lattice with left and right ventricular boundaries. Each element has three intrinsic states-resting, depolarizing, and refractory-and interacts with its neighbors by a weighted probability interaction rule. The BSLM is calculated directly from the current dipole distribution within the heart. The results of normal sequence and left/right bundle branch block simulations, closely matched the experimental results of B. He et al. (1992) and demonstrate the ability of BSLM to resolve and image normal and abnormal cardiac electrical activity with high spatial resolution