| Summary: | Cardiac arrhythmias arise from a variety of structural and electrical substrates and range in clinical presentation from asymptomatic to severely disabling or life threatening. Existing techniques for the characterisation of arrhythmia substrates include surface electrocardiography and intracardiac mapping together with ultrasound, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. In this thesis I study a spectrum of arrhythmia characterisation techniques to improve the understanding of complex arrhythmia mechanisms. The role of surface electrocardiography and intra-cardiac contact mapping together with cardiac magnetic resonance imaging are studied in a variety of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias as well as in an animal model of atrial ablation. Arrhythmia characterisation techniques result in large quantities of data that are frequently considered in combination with other modalities and visualised within the 3- dimensional nature of cardiac structures. Since no techniques are currently available to display multiple parameters without loss of fidelity of either parameter, I developed a new system for data representation. Termed Dot Mapping, this system allows two or more datasets to be concurrently displayed by using separate visual entities (colour and dots) for each. The function, development and feasibility of the system are studied. In summary, this thesis explores and develops a number of techniques for assessing arrhythmia substrates, including surface electrocardiography, intra-cardiac mapping and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging. New (and existing) data thus created are displayed using a new data representation technique designed to optimise the co-display of multiple related modalities.
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