An Innovative Approach to Evaluate a Cardiac Function Based on Surface Measurement

Major function of the heart is to pump blood flow up to all tissues or organs in the body, and it is generally recognized that cardiac function under various diseased conditions are mainly represented by a relationship between blood flow and pressure inside of the heart. In this report, an original proposal of evaluation method on cardiac function is introduced through a simultaneous measurement of various points of cardiac muscular surface. An optical three-dimensional location sensor was employed to measure a displacement change of anatomically specific points on heart surface. Then, changes in strain in each regional surface area were quantitatively obtained. This result indicated similar tendency obtained from echocardiogram. It was also indicated that there was a difference in displacements and phrases between control and arrhythmia. Moreover, strain change in regional area was coincident with a contraction of natural heart. It was found that an attempt to superimpose the data of strain change onto the video images of natural heart was extremely helpful to understand a cardiac function visually