Sensor-to-Cell Height Estimation for Conductivity Estimation in Cardiac Cells
C.H. Kos (TU Delft - Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Richard Hendriks – Mentor (TU Delft - Signal Processing Systems)
Miao Sun – Mentor (TU Delft - Signal Processing Systems)
R.T. Rajan – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Signal Processing Systems)
Dante Muratore – Graduation committee member (TU Delft - Bio-Electronics)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
The heart is one of our vital organs. It functions by periodically contracting in a rhythmic way. Sometimes, this rhythmic behaviour is affected by abnormalities in the tissue. These conditions are referred to as cardiac arrhythmias. One kind is of specific interest, called atrial fibrillation (AF). To further study AF, methods have been developed to estimate the conductivity of cardiac cells based on the measured electrical signals. In addition, other parameters of interest besides the conductivity are involved. The goal of this project was to consider one of the parameters in the electrogram (EGM) model: the sensor-to-cell height.
First, we studied the effect of the height as a parameter in the model when used for conductivity estimation. To that end, a detector was built with which we can explain the effect of all involved parameters on the ability to accurately estimate any parameters of interest.
In addition, we considered the case where the height is unknown and is estimated, thus possibly including estimation errors. The focus was on the consequences of making errors in the estimation of the height with respect to conduction block detection and conductivity estimation.
Lastly, the effort was made to estimate the height. Here, the optimisation problem of height estimation was formalised and derived as its implementable form. At first, a simplified EGM model was assumed in order to mimic and estimate cell-specific effects, i.e. the cell conductivities. Then, the height was estimated in various situations to study its behaviour and performance under different conditions. Then, also the standard EGM model was used in the same way, after which we also tested the performance of the designed algorithm in combination with existing conductivity estimation methods.