Contributions of the 12 Segments of Left Ventricular Myocardium to the Body Surface Potentials

Abstract

Experimental and inverse approaches have been applied in studying the contributions of different parts of the myocardium to the ECG measurements. Also optimal electrode locations for different clinical purposes have been studied by applying body surface maps. It is valuable to know where the measured ECG is actually generated. Thus the measurements can be designed to be most optimal to measure certain myocardial sources. Here we assess the contributions of 12 left ventricular segments to the potentials of 117 surface leads. The study is based on the numerical lead field analysis combined with the cardiac activation modeling. We analyzed the contributions of the signals generated by different segments to the total signal generated by the left ventricle. It was found that anterior segments have high contributions to the leads on the lower left thorax and inferior segments on the leads on the lower left back. These results were expected based on the previous clinical studies.