Real‐time interactive volumetric animation of the heart's electrical cycle from automatically synchronized ECG
John Paul Ryan, Carol O’Sullivan, Christopher P. Bell · Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds · 2004
Abstract We present a novel method for representing the electrical depolarisation and repolarisation of cardiac cells using real‐time volumetric animation techniques. The visual representation coincides with automatically synchronized electrocardiogram (ECG) input. Whilst other projects in similar fields use super‐computers or vastly complex cellular structures, one of the aims of this project is to simplify the process for real‐time optimization. The current techniques are being used in a teaching tool and also are being implemented in a myocardial infarction diagnostic tool. Cellular automata are used to demonstrate the electrical progression with a multi‐pass nearest‐neighbour algorithm and automatic ECG recognition and detection algorithms are used to synchronize the animation with the inputted ECG. We use texture‐based slices to represent the myocardial volume to improve speed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.