M.Sc. Carmen Martínez Antón

Franziska Sophia Stolte

Regions with pathologically altered substrate have been identified as potentially responsible for atrial fibrillation (AFib) and atrial flutter (AFlut) maintenance. Nowadays ,electroanatomical voltage, conduction velocity (CV) mapping and late-gadolinium-enhancement-magnetic-resonance-imagining (LGE-MRI) are different modalities for characterizing atrial substrate. However, these modalities remain showing discordances in the location and extent of arrhytmogenic areas. Local impedance (LI) measurements have recently gained attention in radiofrequency ablation and substrate characterization as changes in conductivity may indicate alterations in myocardial electrophysiology. Thus, LI values are expected to distinguish between healthy and scar tissue independently from the atrial rhythm, which can improve the understanding of underlying substrate modifications. Up to our knowledge, no correlation of pathological substrate detected by local impedance and LGE-MRI, has been performed.