The present invention relates to characterization, quantification and visualization of electrical properties of the heart, and more particularly to estimating electrical properties of the heart based on an electrophysiological model of a patient from medical images and body surface potentials of the patient.
Heart failure is a major cause of death in the western world. Due to insufficient heart function, heart failure causes dyspnea and fatigue, and can also lead to cardiac arrest. Among the wide variety of cardiac rhythm disturbances, left bundle branch block (LBBB) affects approximately 25% of heart failure patients. LBBB is due to an obstruction in the cardiac conduction pathway, which decreases the speed of the electrical wave and potentially leads to dyssynchronous heart beats. For patients with a prolonged QRS-complex (e.g., QRS≥120 ms) and low left-ventricular ejection fraction, cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) is a well-established treatment. CRT consists of implanting electrodes in the heart to pace the muscle artificially and “resynchronize” cardiac contraction. However, 30-50% of patients do not respond to CRT despite being eligible. Hence, better patient selection for CRT is desirable.