Regional conduction velocity calculation based on local activation times: A simulation study on clinical geometries

Abstract

Atrial arrhythmia is the most common cardiac arrhythmia. Parameters such as conduction velocity (CV), CV restitution etc. are under analysis in order to understand the cardiac arrhythmias. A number of methods have been proposed for CV calculation in simulation as well as clinical environments. Regional CV gives the information about the magnitude and direction of the propagating depolarization wavefronts on the atrium with homogeneous and heterogeneous tissue. The CV in different regions can provide important quantitative electrophysiological information about the underlying tissue. In this work the regional CV has been calculated using simulated local activation times (LAT) on clinical atrial geometries. Regions with homogeneous and heterogeneous propagation were manually selected for LAT simulation and later the regional CV has been calculated. The calculated CV for both the homogeneous and heterogeneous cases for all the clinical cases have been visualized on the atrial geometries. The visualization of the CV on the atrium represents insight into the regional behavior of the atrial substrate. The benefit of the region-specific study in clinical context is that it could enable the localization of critical sites in the patient specific atrial anatomies. Thus, this could aid physicians in cardiac therapies.