Cardiac Motion Estimation from Intracardiac Electrical Mapping Data: Identifying a Septal Flash in Heart Failure

In this paper, we present a methodology to estimate cardiac motion directly from the high resolution temporal data provided by an intra-cavity electrical mapping system (CARTO). These data consist in intracardiac electrical measurements, obtained invasively through the contact of a catheter with the endocardial wall at different locations, with simultaneous recording of the position of the measuring catheter over time. The 3D displacement fields between the different timepoints obtained from the position measurements are projected onto the vector pointing from the CARTO points to the centroid of the CARTO cloud, giving a very intuitive vectorial coarse representation of the diastolic and systolic motion. Furthermore, scalar projection 1D curves can be used to identify specific motion patterns. We have applied the proposed methodology to the CARTO acquisitions of nine candidates to cardiac resynchronization therapy, identifying the specific sequence of motion and deformation (septal flash) found in LBBB, which was confirmed by visual inspection of the corresponding MR and 3D-US images.