Paper Info
Title
Post-procedural evaluation of catheter contact force characteristics
Abstract
Minimally invasive catheter ablation of electric foci, performed in electrophysiology labs, is an attractive treatment option for atrial fibrillation (AF) - in particular if drug therapy is no longer effective or tolerated. There are different strategies to eliminate the electric foci inducing the arrhythmia. Independent of the particular strategy, it is essential to place transmural lesions. The impact of catheter contact force on the generated lesion quality has been investigated recently, and first results are promising. There are different approaches to measure catheter-tissue contact. Besides traditional haptic feedback, there are new technologies either relying on catheter tip-to-tissue contact force or on local impedance measurements at the tip of the catheter. In this paper, we present a novel tool for post-procedural ablation point evaluation and visualization of contact force characteristics. Our method is based on localizing ablation points set during AF ablation procedures. The 3-D point positions are stored together with lesion specific catheter contact force (CF) values recorded during the ablation. The force records are mapped to the spatial 3-D positions, where the energy has been applied. The tracked positions of the ablation points can be further used to generate a 3-D mesh model of the left atrium (LA). Since our approach facilitates visualization of different force characteristics for post-procedural evaluation and verification, it has the potential to improve outcome by highlighting areas where lesion quality may be less than desired.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1117/12.912315
Proceedings of SPIE
Keywords
DocType
Volume
catheter contact force,atrial fibrillation,radiofrequency ablation,electrophysiology
Conference
8315
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0277-786X
1
0.39
References 
Authors
0
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Martin Koch1648.58
Alexander Brost215920.28
atilla peter kiraly3479.16
Norbert Strobel413623.42
Joachim Hornegger51734190.62