Dual-Modality Electromechanical Physiology Source Mapping

Human heart is a pump coupled with electrical and mechanical signals, both of which are of spatial distribution and play an important role in cardiac disease diagnosis. In order to monitor the electromechanical spatial distribution of heart, we propose a novel system, which can record electrocardiogram (ECG) and seismocardiogram (SCG) simultaneously. We use contour line to display spatial–temporal distribution of cardiac electromechanical signals and show the easiness to compute critical features, such as heartbeat interval and electromechanical delay (EMD) based on features we propose. Our approach’s validity and resistance to noise are then demonstrated through an individual consistency experiment. We conducted a group experiment with ten subjects, revealing a linear correlation (
${R^{{2}}={0}.{997}}$
) between the proposed feature’s periodicity and the cardiac cycle. In addition, the tracks of extreme points on contour maps show the potential to track local cardiac activities. The potential applications of our system are then discussed, including cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) optimization and ectopic pacemaker detection.