Global vs local control of cardiac alternans in a 1D numerical model of human ventricular tissue.

Cardiac alternans is a proarrhythmic state in which the action potential duration (APD) of cardiac myocytes alternate between long and short values and often occurs under conditions of rapid pacing of cardiac tissue. In the ventricles, alternans is especially dangerous due to the life-threatening risk of developing arrhythmias, such as ventricular fibrillation. Alternans can be formed in periodically paced tissue as a result of pacing itself. Recently, it has been demonstrated that this pacing-induced alternans can be prevented by performing constant diastolic interval (DI) pacing, in which DI is independent of APD. However, constant DI pacing is difficult to implement in experimental settings since it requires the real-time measurement of APD. A more practical way was proposed based on electrocardiograms (ECGs), which give an indirect measure of the global DI relaxation period through the TR interval assessment. Previously, we demonstrated that constant TR pacing prevented alternans formation in isolated Langendorff-perfused rabbit hearts. However, the efficacy of "local" constant DI pacing vs "global" constant TR pacing in preventing alternans formation has never been investigated. Thus, the purpose of this study was to implement an ECG-based constant TR pacing in a 1D numerical model of human ventricular tissue and to compare the dynamical behavior of cardiac tissue with that resulted from a constant DI pacing. The results showed that both constant TR and constant DI pacing prevented the onset of alternans until lower basic cycle length when compared to periodic pacing. For longer cable lengths, constant TR pacing was shown to exhibit greater control on alternans than constant DI pacing.

Similarity Score for the Identification of Active Sites in Patients With Atrial Fibrillation.

BACKGROUND: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia and precursor to other cardiac diseases. Catheter ablation is associated with limited success rates in patients with persistent AF. Currently, existing mapping systems fail to identify critical target sites for ablation. Recently, we proposed and validated several individual techniques, such as dominant frequency (DF), multiscale frequency (MSF), kurtosis (Kt), and multiscale entropy (MSE), to identify active sites of arrhythmias using simulated intracardiac electrograms (iEGMs). However, the individual performances of these techniques to identify arrhythmogenic substrates are not reliable. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop a similarity score using various iEGM analysis techniques to more accurately identify the spatial location of active sites of arrhythmia in patients with AF. METHODS: Clinical bipolar iEGMs were obtained from patients with AF who underwent either successful (m = 4) or unsuccessful (m = 4) catheter ablation. A similarity score (0-3) was developed via the earth mover's distance (EMD) approach based on a combination of DF, MSF, MSE, and Kt techniques. RESULTS: Individual techniques successfully discriminated between successful and unsuccessful AF ablation patients but were not reliable in identifying active spatial sites of AF. However, the proposed similarity score was able to pinpoint the spatial sites with high values (active AF sites) that were observed only in patients with unsuccessful AF termination, suggesting that these active sites were missed during the ablation procedure. CONCLUSION: Arrhythmogenic substrates with abnormal electrical activity are identified in patients with unsuccessful AF termination after catheter ablation, suggesting clinical efficacy of similarity score.

VIEgram - Analysis and Visualization of Intracardiac Electrograms on Patient-Specific 3D Atria Model.

Over the last few years, the use of cardiac mapping for effective diagnosis and treatment of arrhythmias has increased significantly. In the clinical environment, electroanatomical mapping (EAM) is performed during the electrophysiological procedures using proprietary systems such as CARTO, EnSite Precision, RHYTHMIA, etc. These systems generate the 3D model of patient-specific atria with the electrical activity (i.e., intracardiac electrograms (iEGMs)) displayed on it, for further identification of the sources of arrhythmia and for guiding cardiac ablation therapy. Recently, several novel techniques were developed to perform iEGMs analysis to more accurately identify the arrhythmogenic sites. However, there is a difficulty in incorporating the results of iEGMs analysis back to EAM systems due to their proprietary constraints. This created a hurdle in the further development of novel techniques to help navigate patient-specific clinical ablation therapy. Thus, we developed an open source software, VIEgram1, that allows researchers to visualize the results of the various iEGMs analysis on a patient-specific 3D atria model. It eliminates the dependency of the academic environment on the proprietary EAM systems, thereby making the process of retrospective mapping extremely convenient and time efficient. Here, we demonstrate the features of VIEgram such as visual inspection of iEGMs, flexibility in implementing custom iEGMs analysis techniques and interpolation schemes, and spatial analysis.