Experimental evidence for regional cardiac influence in body surface isopotential maps of dogs

Isopotential mpas based on 192-200 body surface electrocardiograms were obtained for 20 dogs during multiple patterns of ventricular activation. The purposes of the study were to determine whether the cardiac location of events responsible for surface potentials had a recognizable influence on surface potential patterns and to examine the influence of electrical events occurring simultaneously in multiple cardiac regions. Substantially different effects of electrical activity in various cardiac regions on body surface potentials were evidenced by the body surface location of potential maxima and minima and by patterns of isopotential lines during early portions of ventricular excitation initiated at different ventricular sites. Simultaneous stimulation at some sites gave surface potential distributions with multiple extrema. These were demonstrated to be due to effects of the different cardiac regions, because addition of potentials due to stimulation of the individual sites duplicated those associated with simultaneous stimulation of the same sites. It was also shown that body surface locations of maxima and minima are not related in the same manner to the cardiac location of the responsible events when these events are present in single and multiple regions. Slopes of potentials due to events in single cardiac regions were shown to combine with slopes produced by events in other regions to yield maxima or minima at new body surface locations. Results of the study support the possibility of regional cardiac examination by electrocardiography but suggest that this will require quantitative descriptions of the details of potential patterns in addition to the location of potential peaks.