A new software program for analyzing cardiac electrophysiological, multi-channel mapping data has been developed by Martin Biermann, M. D., at the Krannert Institute of Cardiology in Indianapolis, Indiana. While IDL provided all necessary, medium-level building blocks for the display routines and the user interface, the IDL language gave me fine control whenever I needed it. And, compared with other rapid application development environments, IDL's speed of execution was simply stunning. Flexible Data Handling with IDL Normal heart function requires a regular sequence of cardiac contraction and relaxation.
Cardiac contraction is controlled by a group of specialized pacemaker cells in the right atrium.
The pacemaker cells depolarize spontaneously at regular intervals, initiating a wave of cellular depolarization that spreads over the entire heart and triggers a cardiac contraction. If this happens, the results can cause loss of consciousness or sudden cardiac death. Approximately 300,000 cases of sudden cardiac deaths occur each year in the United States, a large proportion of which are caused by cardiac arrhythmias. One way of investigating cardiac arrythmias is cardiac electrophysiologic mapping. In order to create spatial and temporal maps of the spread of cardiac activity, the electrical activity of the heart is simultaneously recorded from several hundred cardiac sites.