Skip Navigation

Europace 2007 9(Supplement 6):vi109-vi118; doi:10.1093/europace/eum215
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Lemay, M.
Right arrow Articles by van Oosterom, A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Lemay, M.
Right arrow Articles by van Oosterom, A.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The European Society of Cardiology 2007. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Spatial dynamics of atrial activity assessed by the vectorcardiogram: from sinus rhythm to atrial fibrillation

Mathieu Lemay1,*, Jean-Marc Vesin1, Vincent Jacquemet2, Andrei Forclaz3, Lukas Kappenberger4 and Adriaan van Oosterom3

1 Ecole Polytechique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Signal Processing Institute, STI-ITS-LTS1, Station 11, CH 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland; 2 Computational Electrophysiology Lab, Duke University, Durham NC, USA; 3 Department of Cardiology, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland; 4 CardioMet, Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland

Aim: This study aims at developing methods for extracting spatiotemporal information about the electric activity of the atria from electrocardiographic signals, in particular during atrial fibrillation.

Methods: A biophysical model of the atria and a volume conductor model of the thorax were used to simulate the atrial electrical activity as expressed on the atrial surface as well as on the thorax surface. In all, 22 different types of atrial electric activity were generated, 20 of which related to atrial fibrillation (AF). The spatiotemporal behaviour of the ‘true’ equivalent dipole expression of these activities was documented as well as those of their estimation based on body surface potentials, the vectorcardiogram. Measures were developed for describing the spatial complexity of atrial signals as observed in the ‘atrial’ vectorcardiogram.

Results: Coherence between time course of the vectorcardiogram and the electrical atrial activity of the simulated sinus rhythm and typical atrial flutter has been observed. Identification of the local extremes of the distribution of instantaneous vector orientations revealed the location of stable and single atrial activity sources. Moreover, the spatial complexity of the vectorcardiogram can be quantified in a very natural way by the proposed features and their visualization.

Conclusions: The proposed analysis extracts spatial information that has hitherto remained unnoticed in non-invasive studies on atrial fibrillation (AF).

Key Words: VCG, AF, ECG, Substrates, Discrimination, Spatiotemporal

* Corresponding author. Tel: +41 21 693 69 33; fax: +41 21 693 76 00. E-mail address: mathieu.lemay{at}epfl.ch


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.