Objectives The principal diagnostic methods of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) are inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry, and pulse-taking. Treatment by syndrome differentiation is likely to be subjective. This study was designed to provide a basic theory for TCM diagnosis and establish an objective means of evaluating the correctness of syndrome differentiation. Methods We herein provide the basic theory of TCM syndrome computer modeling based on a noninvasive cardiac electrophysiology imaging technique. Noninvasive cardiac electrophysiology imaging records the heart’s electrical activity from hundreds of electrodes on the patient’s torso surface and therefore provides much more information than 12-lead electrocardiography. Through mathematical reconstruction algorithm calculations, the reconstructed heart model is a machine-readable description of the underlying mathematical physics model that reveals the detailed three-dimensional (3D) electrophysiological activity of the heart. Results From part of the simulation results, the imaged 3D cardiac electrical source provides dynamic information regarding the heart’s electrical activity at any given location within the 3D myocardium. Conclusions This noninvasive cardiac electrophysiology imaging method is suitable for translating TCM syndromes into a computable format of the underlying mathematical physics model to offer TCM diagnosis evidence-based standards for ensuring correct evaluation and rigorous, scientific data for demonstrating its efficacy.

Determination of the relationship between electromagnetic power absorption and temperature distributions inside highly heterogeneous biological samples based on numerical methods is essential in biomedical engineering (e.g. microwave thermal ablation in clinic). In this paper, the gradient expression is examined and analyzed in detail, as how the gradient operators can be discretized is the only real difficulty to the solution of bio-heat equation for highly inhomogeneous model utilizing implicit scheme.