Date of Award
Summer 2008
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
First Advisor
Povinelli, Richard J.
Second Advisor
Yaz, Edwin E.
Third Advisor
Ropella, Kristina M.
Abstract
A novel electrophysiological cardiac model is introduced in this dissertation. The cardiac model considers six key regions that characterize the cardiac electrical activity allowing a sufficiently fast solution to forward and inverse problems. The major drawback of current cardiac modeling methods is computational complexity because they model more than 100,000 regions of the heart. This complexity does not allow current techniques to be used in sufficiently fast diagnostics. In contrast to previous models, the ECM is used as a basis for two sufficiently fast clinical diagnostic applications. The first is the detection of an ischemic heart. The second is the localization of myocardial infarction. A brief overview of the cardiac activity and its relation to the modeling method is presented. Additionally, a historical review of the related fields is discussed. The electrophysiological cardiac modeling method, including the cardiac model, forward and inverse problems solutions, and the diagnostic applications are described in detail.