Optical Imaging of Cardiac Function: System setup and calibration

Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of death and hence diagnosis of cardiac dysfunction is of prime interest. Recently navigated catheter based procedures have been used to add spatial information to recordings of the endocardial potential. However, given the risk and cost involved, a non-invasive method for functional cardiac imaging would be preferable. One approach is Inverse Electrocardiography. Using a torso geometry model the densely sampled body surface potential is mapped on the epicardial surface solving an inverse problem [1, 2]. While the method is elegant and can provide insight in functional patterns of the heart, it is also inherently limited by the ill-posedness of the underlying inverse problem. Moreover, respiratory and cardiac motion can impact the solution. We propose a novel setup to combine different imaging sources to enhance and adequately validate the reconstruction results.