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(Adapted by Peter Love and Suzanne Amador Kane from Catherine Crouchs Swarthmore lab on ECGs 4/2010)
PURPOSE
To observe the electric fields generated by the human heart by measuring an electrocardiogram (ECG)
To gain further familiarity with measuring potential difference (voltage)
INTRODUCTION
In this lab exercise, you are measuring the electric dipole moment of the heart as a function of time. You
will take an electrocardiogram (ECG) by measuring the potential difference between selected points on
the surface of the body. A leading cardiologist says that the ECG is the among the most valuable clinical
tests available to medicine because it is quick, completely safe, painless, inexpensive, and rich in
information. Today youll learn how to take these measurements.
As you saw in the electric field mapping lab, if we have two
opposite electric charges, q and q, separated by a distance
d, this is called an electric dipole. In the field mapping lab
you should have sketched some of the equipotential lines
shown in the figure on the left.
How are dipoles produced in the heart? The muscles in the heart
are stimulated to beat by waves of electrical charging and
discharging across cell membranes. Figure 2 shows a membrane
separating positive and negative electrical charges.
Figure 2: Schematic diagram showing positive and negative charges separated by a cell membrane. For a cell at
rest (like a muscle cell in the heart), the membrane potential is usually negative inside the cell. When a cell is
excited, the potential inside the cell become more positive, and the potential outside the cell more negative. The
dipole moment of the heart arises because different cells are excited in different places at different times.
What is the electrical potential of a dipole? This is just equal to the sum of the potentials from each
charge. In the case that the potential is measured at a point which is far from the dipole we obtain:
Eq. 3
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Physics 102
ECG Lab
Using this formula we can compute the dipole moment of the heart if we measure several voltage
differences at a known distance and orientation. The important facts to remember are that the ECG
potential, V, depends upon:
Figure 7 (right) Schematic diagram of the chambers of the heart (shown by convention looking toward
the front of the body.) (bottom left) Schematic of an electrocardiogram. (top left) one cycle of an ECG
taken from Professor Love, Lead I, showing the PQRST features.
Your heart is a pump. Blood enters the atria, the smaller chambers of the heart, which then contract,
forcing the blood into the larger, lower chambers of the heart, the ventricles. Then these contract, forcing
the blood around your body. The ECG you will record has a characteristic shape, labeled by five letters
in cardiology to denote different phases of the heartbeat.
1. The peak labeled P corresponds to the initial electrical pulse triggering the hearts contraction.
The interval from P to Q corresponds to the spreading of the depolarization across the smaller
chambers of the heart (the atriasingular atrium), and is typically very small because the atria
are only a small fraction of the heart
2. The QRS complex the great big feature in any ECG trace shows where the ventricles contract.
These are the largest, lower chambers of the heart, explaining why this feature is bigger than the
P feature for the atria
3. The T wave this shows where the ventricles re-polarize in preparation for the next heartbeat.
This is where the muscles are relaxing after contraction.
Physics 102
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ECG Lab
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The ECG sensor has three electrodes, connected to wires colored red, black, and green. The sensor
measures potential difference between the red and green wires, with the red wire serving as the positive
wire and the green wire negative. The black wire serves as the reference for the zero of potential, so when
you zero the ECG sensors, it uses the reading of the black wire as zero. In our setup, for all three
measurements, the black lead is attached to the right ankle.
Figure 3: Two electrocardiography measurement configurations. The distances r are the that define the
geometry of the problem, so there is a distance rI for Lead I and rII for Lead II. The figure on the right
shows the angular relationship between the two Lead voltage measurement configurations.
The ECG measures the potential difference between the red and green leads as a function of time. A data
point can be measured as often as every 5 milliseconds. In medicine, each potential difference is referred
to as a Lead (short for a pair of wires). The two potential differences we will measure are called Lead
I and Lead II and are shown in Figure 3.
Lead I places the red (positive) lead on the left wrist and the green (negative) lead on the right
wrist. The black lead is attached to the right ankle. Lead I measures the potential difference
between two points on a horizontal line, and is generated only by the x-component of the heart
dipole moment. (Fig. 3 and 4)
Lead II places the red (positive) lead on the left ankle and the green (negative) lead on the
right wrist. The black lead is attached to the right ankle. The line between the Lead II points
approximately 60 degrees to the horizontal. (Fig. 3 and 4) Thus, Lead II will depend upon both x
and y-components of the hearts dipole.
Vector analysis allows you to combine Lead I and Lead II to determine the vertical (y-component) of the
dipole moment of the heart.
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Physics 102
ECG Lab