Abstract:

Over the last years, nonfluoroscopic in vivo cardiac mapping and navigation systems have been developed and successfully applied in clinical electrophysiology. Clearly, a trend can be observed to introduce more sensors into the measurement system so that physiological information can be gathered simultaneously and more efficiently and the duration of procedure can be shortened significantly. However, it would not be realistic to equip each catheter electrode with a localizer, e.g., by embedding a miniature magnetic location sensor. Therefore, in this paper, an alternate approach has been worked out to efficiently localize multiple catheter electrodes by considering the impedance between electrodes in the heart and electrode patches on the body surface. In application of the new technique, no additional expensive and sophisticated hardware is required other than the currently existing cardiac navigation system. A tank model and a computerized realistic human model are employed to support the development of the positioning system. In the simulation study, the new approach achieves an average localization error of less than 1 mm, which proves the feasibility of the impedance-based catheter positioning system. Consequently, the new positioning system can provide an inexpensive and accurate solution to improve the efficiency and efficacy of catheter ablation.

Abstract:

A catheter has a mapping assembly having a plurality of splines mounted at its distal portion. The splines each have a proximal end disposed at the distal portion of the catheter body and a distal end and configured as a Fibonacci spiral arm that diverges outwardly from the proximal end. The splines have a support arm with shape memory, a non-conductive covering in surrounding relation to the support arm, at least one location sensor mounted at or near the distal end, a plurality of electrodes mounted in surrounding relation to the non-conductive covering, and a plurality of electrode lead wires extending within the non-conductive covering. Each electrode lead wire is attached to a corresponding one of the electrodes.