Cardiac Voltage Analysis Software for Interpretation of Transmembrane Voltage Matrices Obtained via the Langendorff Perfusion Setup
This project was supported by the University of Minnesota's Office of Undergraduate Research.
When studying the transmembrane voltage of the heart to better understand arrhythmia and healthy heart conditions, oftentimes ex-vivo perfusion of the heart is performed using the Langendorff perfusion setup. In this setup, voltage sensitive fluorescent dye is injected into the heart, and recorded to create a movie with a spatial resolution of 80x80 ran at 1000 frames per second. This creates a 3D matrix whereby each pixel within the movie represents the transmembrane voltage of the heart at that location.
The goal of this project is to develop a MATLAB software capable of easily and intuitively analyzing this 3D matrix, a task necessary to the contemporary development of the electrophysiological cardiology field, and to providing easy assessment of electrophysiological properties of the heart during normal and abnormal cardiac rhythms. When complete, the software will be able to automatically identify the start and end frames of action potentials, plot these action potentials, calculate and map the dominant frequency and multiscale frequency of the action potentials, determine the mean conduction velocity of the transmembrane voltage, create vector fields for the conduction velocity, create maps for both activation time and action potential duration, display an animation of the voltage moving across the tissue, and much more. Additionally, with the completion of this software, its release for public use can be considered, allowing and encouraging for more institutions to take part in this technique for studying cardiology.