Thermographic and electrical measurements for cardiac surgery inspection

The aim of this paper is to analyze the validity of new methods applicable for cardiac surgery intraoperation inspection. In vivo measurements on pigs using passive and active thermography as well as electroimpedance spectroscopy applied to investigation of the heart tissue properties during open chest cardiac surgery are related. The measurement results clearly show that each of proposed modalities is giving different information valuable for evaluation of the heart muscle biological properties. This information may have very high importance in terms of intra-operation inspection as well as for decisions of proper medical interventions. A series of cardiac operations on anaesthetized pigs involving a controlled heart infarct followed by extensive histopathologic study allowed the authors to make an objective evaluation of the value of the discussed methods.