A new possibility in the study of heart activation: the nondipolar body surface map.

The main goal of the present paper is to study the temporal and spatial course of cardiac electrical activation noninvasively, and to acquire more information than can be obtained from conventional methods, such as electrocardiography or vectorcardiography. The single moving resultant heart dipole is determined from a set of measured body surface potential maps before dipolar and nondipolar theoretical body surface potential maps are calculated. These three kinds of maps are studied together in different electro-cardiological situations (normal, left and right bundle branch block, and necrosis) during the entire cardiac cycle. The set of nondipolar maps is suitable for localizing and following the changes of minor positivity and negativity to detect small extensions of infarcts.