Working towards the first BSPM management system

The Body Surface Potential Map (BSPM) provides a more complete picture of cardiac function when compared to the 12-lead ECG. Arguably, the BSPM has not had widespread adoption largely due to the lack of a framework for managing BSPM datasets. In our current work we have developed a storage format and a viewer to be used in a BSPM management system.The storage format was created using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and was named XML-BSPM. A Web based viewer was subsequently developed to visualize XML-BSPM files. The XML toolbox in MATLAB was used to convert 240 BSPMs to the XML-BSPM format. These files where inserted into a database using MySQL and a PHP Web page was used to display patient records. Each record included a link to open the BSPM inside the viewer. In summary, the format and the viewer were used successfully in storing and visualizing 240 XML-BSPM files.