Single or multi-mode cardiac activity data collection, processing and display obtained in a non-invasive manner

• US 7,043,292 B2
• Filed: 06/21/2002
• Issued: 05/09/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/21/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Chih-Cheng Lu, Peter P. Tarjan, Walter Besio
• Original Assignee: Chih-Cheng Lu, Peter P. Tarjan, Walter Besio
• Inventors: Lu, Chih-Cheng, Tarjan, Peter P., Besio, Walter
• Primary Examiner(s): Jastrzab, Jeffrey R.
• Application Number:
  US10/176,944
• Publication Number:
  US 20030236466A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,418 Days
• Field of Search: 600/508, 600/509, 600/512, 600/528
• US Class Current: 600/509
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/25 Bioelectric electrodes therefor
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/28 for electrocardiography [ECG]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/745 using a holographic display
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/08 Detecting organic movements or changes, e.g. tumours, cysts, swellings A61B8/02 - A61B8/06 take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/483 involving the acquisition of a 3D volume of data
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 8/488 involving Doppler signals

Abstract

The method of presenting concurrent information about the electrical and mechanical activity of the heart using non-invasively obtained electrical and mechanical cardiac activity data from the chest or thorax of a patient comprises the steps of: placing at least three active Laplacian ECG sensors at locations on the chest or thorax of the patient; where each sensor has at least one outer ring element and an inner solid circle element, placing at least one ultrasonic sensor on the thorax where there is no underlying bone structure, only tissue, and utilizing available ultrasound technology to produce two or three-dimensional displays of the moving surface of the heart and making direct measurements of the exact sites of the sensors on the chest surface to determine the position and distance from the center of each sensor to the heart along a line orthogonal to the plane of the sensor and create a virtual heart surface; updating the measurements at a rate to show the movement of the heart'"'"'s surface; monitoring at each ultrasonic sensor site and each Laplacian ECG sensor site the position and movement of the heart and the passage of depolarization wave-fronts in the vicinity; treating those depolarization wave-fronts as moving dipoles at those sites to create images of their movement on the image of the beating heart'"'"'s surface; and, displaying the heart'"'"'s electrical activity on the dynamically changing image of the heart'"'"'s surface with the goal to display an approximation of the activation sequence on the beating virtual surface of the heart

Claims

1. A method of presenting concurrent information about the electrical and mechanical activity of the heart using non-invasively obtained electrical and mechanical cardiac activity data from the chest or thorax of a patient comprising the steps of:

placing at least three active concentric ring Laplacian ECG sensors at locations on the chest or thorax of the patient, each sensor having at least one outer ring element and an inner solid circle element;

placing at least one ultrasonic sensor on the thorax where there is no underlying bone structure, only tissue, and utilizing available ultrasound technology to produce two or three-dimensional displays of the moving surface of the heart and making direct measurements of the exact sites of the sensors on the chest surface to determine the position and distance from the center of each sensor to the heart along a line orthogonal to the plane of the sensor and create a virtual heart surface;

updating the measurements at a rate to show the movement of the heart'"'"'s surface;

monitoring at each ultrasonic sensor site and each Laplacian ECG sensor site the position and movement of the heart and the passage of depolarization wave-fronts in the vicinity;

treating those depolarization wave-fronts as moving dipoles at those sites to create images of their movement on the image of the beating heart'"'"'s surface; and

,

displaying the heart'"'"'s electrical activity on the dynamically changing image of the heart'"'"'s surface with the goal to display an approximation of the activation sequence on the beating virtual surface of the heart.

2. The method of claim 1 comprising the further steps of creating chest surface maps of isochrones and projecting those isochrones onto a virtual surface that represents the heart, which can indicate simultaneously depolarized zones for detecting zones of abnormal depolarization and contraction patterns.

3. The method of claim 1 comprising the further steps of creating Laplacian isopotential maps on the chest surface or by projecting the map onto a virtual and moving heart surface.

4. A method of measuring, analyzing and visualizing electrical and mechanical activities in a system comprising the steps of:

a. collecting signals over a part of a surface of the system using a plurality of active concentric ring Laplacian sensors, where each sensor has at least one outer ring element and an inner solid circle element and a data acquisition unit,

b. collecting ultrasonic information about the distance from each sensor to the surface of the moving heart below the each sensor

c. determining the positions of the sensors,

d. reducing measurement noise in the collected signals with digital filtering algorithms,

e. computing and monitoring the equivalent moving dipoles which generate the detected signal at the Laplacian sensors and their positions from the ultrasonic image of the heart; and

,

f. displaying simultaneously still images of the processed signals in both the time and space domains, together with the virtual image of the object of signal origination forming a moving image, and,

g. updating the measurements periodically to show the movement of the object of signal origination.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein said steps (a) to (g) are repeated for sequential time epochs.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein the system is a biological system.

7. The method of claim 4 wherein the charges or dipoles originate in the heart of a creature.

8. The method of claim 4 wherein the charges or dipoles originate from some other organ in the body of the creature that can be sonated.

9. The method of claim 4 wherein the signals recorded from the Laplacian ECG and the ultrasound sensors are digitized and stored.

10. An apparatus for measuring, analyzing and visualizing electrical and mechanical activities in a biological system, comprising a plurality of sensors and ultrasound transducers for detecting signals over part of a surface of a biological system, such as an internal organ,

means for collecting the detected signals,

means for determining positions of the sensors,

means for determining the Moments of Activation (MOA'"'"'s) of the collected signals,

means for determining the surface of interest in the ultrasound image,

means for reducing measurement noise by applying digital filtering algorithms, and

means for displaying the spread of electrical activity on the image of the surface of the moving heart dynamically.

11. The apparatus of claim 10 further including means for analyzing the electrical and mechanical activities for sequential time epochs.

12. The apparatus of claim 10 further including means for analyzing the electrical and mechanical activities sequentially, using a stationary image of the heart during the display of the electrical activity, followed by the display of the contracting and relaxing surface of the object of signal origination.

13. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the means for collecting the signals and the means for determining the MOAs and the means for determining the surface of interest include, respectively, a plurality of concentric ring Laplacian ECG sensors where each sensor has at least one outer ring element and an inner solid circle element and the ultrasound transducers.

14. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the plurality of sensors further includes an array of magnetic sensors.

15. The apparatus of claim 10 wherein the plurality of sensors includes an array of magnetic sensors and an array of concentric ring Laplacian ECG sensors.

16. A method for processing ultrasonic data from at least two ultrasonic transducers and electrical signals from multiple concentric ring Laplacian sensors each having at least one outer ring element and a center circle element and arranged near a heart to sense movements of a heart including the steps of:

combining the ultrasonic data to detect the distance between the a sensor and its target, as well as the a Doppler shift to be used for predicting the corresponding a position of a reflecting surface for a consecutive pulse of ultrasonic data resulting in the actual position of the the portion of the surface of the heart that generates the electrical signal; and

further combining an image of the heart'"'"'s surface with a Laplacian potential isochronal maps.