A biophysical model of atrial fibrillation to simulate the Maze III ablation pattern

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia. The Maze III ablation pattern consists of creating lines of conduction block in both atria to prevent multiple wavelets. In this work we simulated the Maze III pattern in a tridimensional (3D) model of human remodeling atria and evaluated its efficacy for termination of an AF episode. To carry out the study, an episode of AF was generated by ectopic activity in the left pulmonary veins. Unipolar pseudo-electrograms were computed. When we applied the Maze III ablation pattern, the AF was finished after 200 ms. The developed model can be implemented to improve ablation patterns in order to find an ideal pattern to allow ending the arrhythmia with the least number of lines of ablation.