Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common arrhythmia and a major cause of morbidity. Its management imposes a huge burden on healthcare systems, warranting development of novel, efficient treatments. Catheter ablation (CA) currently is the only curative, minimally invasive therapy for AF. However, CA lesions created by delivery of thermal RF energy can heal, resulting in high arrhythmia recurrence rates. A novel method of pulsed field ablation (PFA) uses electrical pulses to cause irreversible cell electroporation. This fast, nonthermal CA method treats AF with sound lesion durability, and poses low risk to adjacent tissue [1]. Optimal “recipes” have yet to be determined for electrical energy intensity, pulse duration and frequency, and variations of the diverse device designs and electrode configurations. This project aims to: Apply computational models of 3D atrial electrophysiology to optimise the PFA settings; Further apply the 3D atrial models for optimising ablation lesion patterns in AF patients; Implement the optimised PFA electrical settings and patterns into a robotics CA system.
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Computational optimisation and robotics implementation of novel pulsed field ablation technique for atrial fibrillation therapy
