inhomogeneous electrodynamic model of human chest in the shape of elliptical
cylinder
N. O. Strelkov, M. N. Kramm, G. V.
Zhikhareva
Moscow Power Engineering Institute
(Technical University)
Received July 12, 2011
Abstract. The aim of this study was to
compare several torso models, which helps to analyze electric potential
distributions caused by current source in conductive medium inside torso with
quasi-static approximation. The necessity of such comparison comes from
construction a model, which in on the one hand will be simple for electrocardiographic (ECG) signal interpretation and on the other hand will not
add sufficient distortion to body surface potential map (BSPM). In this paper
we presented different torso models, in which torso was constructed from
elliptic cylinder with several inhomogeneities (represent heart with blood,
lungs, skeletal muscle, skeletal bones, etc.). We did a comparison of BSPMs
calculated from dipolar current source with help of correlation coefficient,
normalized relative error, and potential levels. The results show that full
inhomogeneous model (contains all inhomogeneities) has a BSPM which is similar
to homogeneous torso model with correlation coefficient over 0.99.
Keywords: torso, electrocardiography, ECG forward problem, body surface
potential map, inhomogeneity, medium conductivity, current streamline figure.