Noninvasive three-dimensional cardiac activation imaging of ventricular arrhythmias in the rabbit heart

In the present study, a physical-model based three-dimensional (3-D) cardiac electrical imaging (3-DCEI) technique was evaluated with the aid of 3-D intra-cardiac mapping from 200 intramural sites during norepinephrine (NE) induced ventricular arrhythmias in the rabbit heart. Body surface potentials and intramural bipolar electrical recordings using plunge-needle electrodes were simultaneously measured in a closed-chest condition in a healthy rabbit. The non-invasively imaged activation sequence correlated well with invasively measured counterparts, with an averaged correlation coefficient of 0.70, and a relative error of 0.30. The sites of initial activation were well localized to be within ~5mm from the initiation sites determined from intra-cardiac mapping. The present experimental results suggest that the 3-DCEI approach can reconstruct 3-D ventricular global activation sequence and localize the origin of activation during focal ventricular arrhythmias.