Section: Application Domains

Clinical electrophysiology

Treatment of cardiac arrhythmia is possible by pharmacological means, by implantation of pacemakers and defibrillators, and by curative ablation of diseased tissue by local heating or freezing. In particular the ablative therapies create challenges that can be addressed by numerical means. Cardiologists would like to know, preferably by noninvasive means, where an arrhythmia originates and by what mechanism it is sustained.

We address this issue in the first place using inverse models, which attempt to estimate the cardiac activity from a (high-density) electrocardiogram. A new project aims at performing this estimation on-site in the catheterization laboratory and presenting the results, together with the cardiac anatomy, on the screen that the cardiologist uses to monitor the catheter positions [40].

An important prerequisite for this kind of interventions and for inverse modeling is the creation of anatomical models from imaging data. The Carmen team contributes to better and more efficient segmentation and meshing through the IDAM project.