Features of Body Surface Potential Maps from A Large Normal Population

Abstract

Clinical use of body surface potential maps requires some means of quantitative comparison and classification. Visual inspection of maps is only qualitative and use of models to predict cardiac sources is based on incomplete information that has had limited success in clinical use. In our laboratory, we have developed a method of map analysis that represents map data as a set of temporal and spatial basis functions common to all maps and 216 coefficients unique to each individual map (1,2). These 216 coefficients can be used with common statistical techniques to compare individual maps or groups of maps classified by independent clinical methods. The details of this method of quantitative map analysis are discussed in another chapter. Since the method involves the statistical comparison of map features, it requires definition of the range of potential patterns in a large population of normal subjects. This chapter describes body surface map features of over 800 normal subjects in relation to age, sex and body habitus and is intended to provided the basis for diagnostic studies involving body surface potential mapping.