Three-dimensional cardiac tissue image registration for analysis of in vivo electrical mapping.

A method is presented for registering 3D cardiac tissue images to reference data, for the purpose of analyzing recorded electrical activity. Following left-ventricular in vivo electrical mapping studies in pig hearts, MRI is used to define a reference geometry in the tissue segment around the recording electrodes. The segment is then imaged in 3D using a high-resolution serial imaging microscopy technique. The tissue processing required for this introduces segment-wide distortion. Piecewise-smooth maps are used to correct the tissue distortion and register the 3D images with the reference MRI data. The methods are validated and techniques for identifying the preferred maps are proposed. Recorded electrical activation is shown to map reliably onto cardiac tissue structure using this registration method.