Spatial Cross-Correlation to Determine Atrial Fibrillation Recurrence After Ablation

Abstract

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is already the most frequent arrhythmia in the clinical practice. Pulmonary vein ablation has emerged as a treatment that is able to make disappear the arrhythmia, nevertheless up to half of ablated AF patients suffer recurrences within the first year. In this study multiple simultaneous intra-atrial bipolar recordings were located at three locations, pulmonary veins and the right and the left atrium before the ablation procedure. Signal organization parameters were determined using cross-correlation analysis along the three main atrial regions. The results showed that before the procedure, patients with recurrence in the arrhythmia showed that left atrial activity was less correlated with other atrial regions compared with patients that maintained sinus rhythm. Moreover, time-lagged correlation coefficient between two time series showed higher delays in patients that experienced recurrence of AF. These results can be helpful for procedures designing to end AF.