Cardiac deformation from electro-anatomical mapping data: Application to scar characterization

Abstract

We propose in this paper a new way of calculating an endocardial end-systolic deformation parameter from electro-anatomical data acquired intra-operatively during electrophysiology interventions. The estimated parameter is then used to study deformation in regions with different viability properties: scar, border zone and normal myocardial tissue. These regions are defined based on electrophysiological data acquired with a contact mapping system, specifically with the bipolar voltage maps and a set of routinely used thresholds. The obtained results when applying our methodology on a set of 8 cases show statistically significant differences between the average deformation values of the scar, border zone and normal myocardial tissue areas, thus demonstrating the feasibility of detecting changes in deformation between normal and non-healthy tissue from electro-anatomical maps. Nevertheless, although low deformation regions more often correspond to non-healthy tissue, deformation is not an accurate indicator of viability abnormalities. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.