Mapping the organization of human atrial fibrillation using a basket catheter

From recent studies of atrial fibrillation (AF) in animals and humans it appears that improvement in the success rate of ablation may be achieved by evaluating the local electrophysiological properties of the atrial tissue. The aim of this study was to develop an automated method for the assessment of the organization of the whole right atrium. Bipolar electrograms were obtained from multielectrode basket catheters (MBC) in the right atrium in 5 informed patients with AF. The local atrial period (AP) and number of occurrence (NO) were calculated from each electrogram. Organization of the whole atrium was estimated by bidimensional interpolation of the AP and NO measurements. AP and NO maps allowed to identify areas with different degree of organization. A larger database is needed to assess the clinical value of our approach