Purpose

Atrial fibrillation (AF), the most prevalent form of cardiac arrhythmia, afflicts millions worldwide. Here, we developed an imaging algorithm for the diagnosis and online guidance of radio-frequency ablation, which is currently the first line of treatment for AF and other arrhythmia. This requires the simultaneous mapping of the left atrium anatomy and the propagation of the electrical activation wave, and for some arrhythmia, within a single heartbeat.

Methods

We constructed a multi-frequency ultrasonic system consisting of 64 elements mounted on a spherical basket, operated in a synthetic aperture mode, that allows instant localization of thousands of points on the endocardial surface and yields a MRI-like geometric reconstruction.

Results

The system and surface localization algorithm were extensively tested and validated in a series of in silico and in vitro experiments. We report considerable improvement over traditional methods along with theoretical results that help refine the extracted shape. The results in left atrium-shaped silicon phantom were accurate to within 4 mm.

Conclusions

A novel catheter system consisting of a basket of splines with multiple multi-frequency ultrasonic elements allows 3D anatomical mapping and real-time tracking of the entire heart chamber within a single heartbeat. These design parameters achieve highly acceptable reconstruction accuracy.

中文翻译：

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使用新型稀疏超声导管阵列实时绘制整个心腔

目的

心律失常的最普遍形式是心房颤动（AF），全球折磨着数百万。在这里，我们开发了一种用于射频消融的诊断和在线指导的成像算法，这是目前治疗房颤和其他心律不齐的第一线。这需要在单个心跳内同时绘制左心房解剖图和电激活波的传播图，并且对于某些心律不齐。

方法

我们构建了一个多频超声系统，该系统由安装在球形篮上的64个元件组成，并以合成孔径模式运行，该系统可在心内膜表面上即时定位数千个点，并产生类似MRI的几何形状。

结果

在一系列计算机和体外实验中，对该系统和表面定位算法进行了广泛的测试和验证。我们报告了对传统方法的重大改进以及有助于完善提取形状的理论结果。左心房形硅体模的结果精确到4 mm以内。

结论

一种由花篮和多个多频超声元件组成的新型导管系统，可在单个心跳内对整个心腔进行3D解剖映射和实时跟踪。这些设计参数实现了高度可接受的重建精度。