Epicardial cardiac source-field behavior

The accurate determination of the spatial distribution of cardiac electrophysiological state is essential for the mechanistic assessment of cardiac arrhythmias in both clinical and experimental cardiac electrophysiological laboratories. The authors describe three fundamental cardiac source-field relationships: 1) activation fields; 2) electrotonic fields; and 3) volume conductor fields. The three cases are described analytically and illustrated with experimentally obtained canine cardiac recordings that capitalize on a recently formulated technique for in vivo cardiac transmembrane current estimation.