Measurement of cardiac electric field and current density during defibrillation

Abstract

To better delineate the mechanisms for defibrillation, work has begun to integrate experimental and numerical analyses of the electric field and current density during defibrillation. Measurement techniques developed are described. A bipolar electrode that eliminates the measurement errors associated with conventional unipolar electrodes is presented. Measurement results are presented together with a finite-element field solver that is useful for the numerical analysis of defibrillation and prediction of field perturbation associated with the bipolar electrodes.<>