Estimation of local cardiac conduction velocity based on intra-cardiac recordings

  • Atrial fibrillation (AFib) and atrial flutter (AFlut) are the most common cardiac arrhythmias affecting approximately 1% of the population. Even though they are not immediately life threatening, these reentry arrhythmias are associated with severe complications such as cerebral stroke. Physicians seek to identify the atrial excitation pattern and the underlying substrate during electrophysiological catheter examinations. According to wavelength theory, the cardiac conduction velocity (CV) is the main determinant of possibly sustained reentry paths besides the duration of the effective refractory period.
    Despite great improvements of both the hardware of electro-anatomic mapping systems in terms of signal to noise ratio amongst others and the algorithms used to process the acquired data, a reliable estimation of CV remains a challenge in clinical practice. The aim of this work is to investigate novel ways of estimating CV beyond classic approaches based on the ratio of distance and time delay. These methods will be evaluated in silico in a first step to identify their accuracy and robustness under controlled conditions. Subsequently, they will be applied to clinical data and compared to other approaches.