Electrophysiological Evaluation of the Continuity and Transmurality of Surgical Ablation Lesions in Ex Vivo Perfused Porcine Hearts by Unipolar High-Resolution Mapping

Introduction: Currently, there is no method available for intra-operative evaluation of the completeness (transmurality and continuity) of surgical ablation lesions. This study aimed to investigate the changes in electrogram characteristics and activation patterns caused by different (non)transmural and (dis)continuous ablation lesions in ex...

Evaluating morphological patterns in atrial epicardial potentials: Clustering of time series potentials during atrial fibrillation

Introduction: Potentials measured at the epicardial surface contain information regarding the conductive properties of the atrial tissue. The current lack of morphological categorization during atrial fibrillation (AF) provokes the usage of unsupervised learning methods to evaluate time series electrograms across the atrial surface. Analysis of...

The area of a unipolar electrogram to identify the arrhythmogenic substrate

Background: Unipolar electrograms (U-EGMs) contain additional information about interatrial activation and conduction in their morphology, which may aid towards improved diagnosis and staging of atrial fibrillation (AF).Objective: The primary objective is to investigate regional differences in electrogram area (EA) during SR and AF and to design...

Cardiac mapping on ex vivo perfused porcine slaughterhouse hearts: A Langendorff perfusion protocol for epicardial mapping on isolated beating hearts

Cardiac mapping techniques, in which an electrode-array is placed directly on the surface of the heart, were developed to gain a better insight in the underlying electropathology of cardiac arrhythmias. This procedure is performed in patients undergoing cardiac surgery, but here not all relevant cardiac structures and conduction inquiries can be...