Prediction of Atrial Fibrillation Recurrence by Pulmonary Vein Electrogram Correlation

Abstract

Time and frequency domain analysis has been applied to atrial electrograms to quantify the temporal and spatial organization during atrial fibrillation (AF). Intracardiac recordings obtained before AF ablation procedure were analyzed in order to predict the recurrence outcome of AF after an ablation intervention. Such analysis may be used to quantify both temporal/ frequency and spatial organization during AF. Pulmonary vein electrogram recordings from ten AF patients were analyzed. Results showed changes in spectral characteristics with higher dispersion in spatial organization along the pulmonary veins in patients that had recurrence in the arrhythmia 0.14±0.01 vs. 0.07±0.02 in patients that maintained sinus rhythm (p<0.001). Moreover, similar results were obtained by frequency and temporal domain analysis. The proposed analysis could be useful for a better understanding of electrophysiological mechanisms during AF in both groups of patients, where the electrical activity is collected from electrodes located in the pulmonary veins area before the isolation procedure.