Radiology, Vol 180, 685-692, Copyright © 1991 by Radiological Society of North America
Biomagnetic localization of ventricular arrhythmias
W Moshage, S Achenbach, K Gohl, A Weikl, K Bachmann, P Wegener, S Schneider and W Harer
Medical Clinic II (Cardiology), University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.
The magnetic fields caused by electrical activity of the human heart can be
coherently measured with a highly sensitive, multichannel, superconducting
quantum interference-device system and can enable noninvasive localization
of the underlying electrical activity. The magnetocardiograms (MCGs) of 10
patients with spontaneous premature ventricular complexes (PVCs), three
patients with ventricular tachycardia (VT), and four healthy subjects with
induced paced beats were recorded for 2-15 minutes. After correction for
superimposed repolarization activity, the site of origin of the arrhythmias
was localized from the magnetic field distribution at the onset of the
ectopic beats. The localization results of paced beats showed an error of a
few millimeters in relation to the position of the catheter tip. The
results of spontaneous PVC and VT were confirmed with endocardial mapping
or associated with ischemic lesions. The authors conclude that multichannel
magnetocardiographic studies enable the completely noninvasive localization
of ventricular arrhythmias.
