The Diagnostic Performances of Visual Examination of BSM and of ECG/VCG in the Identification of Chronically Infarcted Left Ventricular Segments

Abstract

Since in Body Surface Mapping the complete information on the surface potentials caused by the heart’s action is sampled, this method a priori can be expected to yield a diagnostic power which is superior to that of conventional electrocardiography or vectorcardiography. These conventional methods use only a part of the available information, reduced respectively to a collection of wave forms or to the strength and direction of a single dipole in time. There is abundant evidence that supports this hypothesis (see discussion section). It is questionable whether the method of visual inspection, routinely applied by the majority of clinicians to “bedside” electrocardiographic tracings will suffice to establish an exact diagnosis in all cases. It is for this reason, that computerprograms for the interpretation of both EGG and VGG have been developed which are applied routinely in several diagnostic centers.