Comparison of Current Densities measured in a Pig Heart during States of Ventricular Fibrillation and Post-mortem for different Defibrillation Electrode Positions

Current density imaging (CDI) is an MRI technique used to quantitatively measure current density vectors in biological tissue. A fast CDI sequence was developed that can image the whole body of a 4 kg pig in about 15 minutes. A state of ventricular fibrillation (VF) can be sustained for nearly 30 minutes allowing two complete CDI scans of the same subject. A single parameter, i.e. electrode position, is adjusted between the two scans for comparative analysis. This study compares the current density vector directions and current density magnitudes measured for two typical electrode positions, i.e. apex anterior (AA) and apex posterior (AP). The comparative experiment is repeated on the same subjects for states of immediate post-mortem and one hour post-mortem. Further, the acquired vector datasets are used to compute conductivity images of the heart