A new method for measuring myocardial conductivities: the parallel electrodes technique

A theoretical analysis of a new method for the measurement of passive electrical properties of cardiac muscle is presented. A pair of parallel line electrodes is applied over the myocardium. These electrodes inject and withdraw a sub-threshold sinusoidal current while point electrodes located in-between, measure the induced potentials. These potentials are in turn fitted to a myocardial model to estimate the conductivities. The 3D current distribution is computed using a 2D model whose numerical solution is not restricted by the hypothesis of an equal anisotropy ratio. The cardiac muscle is modeled as a bidomain and anisotropic milieu and the coupled partial differential equations are numerically solved using a Fast Fourier Transform algorithm