The Use of ECG Body Surface Mapping in the Early Stages of Myocardial Infarction

The goal of this work was to develop an ECG Body Surface Mapping system and use it in patients in the early stages of myocardial infarction. Treatment with intracoronary streptokinase provided an opportunity to obtain a correlation between occluded artery and mapping findings, I a time frame where little information is available. The system developed comprises the hardware and software to handle 64 ECG leads. It is portable and allows signal acquisition within 10 minutes, an important feature when working with very ill patients. The ECG map characteristics of 30 normal subjects were analyzed using isopotential and isointegral maps. Variability was studied in some subjects of this group over a 24 hours period. Special quantitative indices were applied in patients with acute myocardial infarction. A departure index map provided good results in terms of localization of the infarct