Assessing the atrial electromechanical coupling during atrial focal tachycardia, flutter, and fibrillation using electromechanical wave imaging in humans.

ABSTRACT: Minimally-invasive treatments of cardiac arrhythmias such as radio-frequency ablation are gradually gaining importance in clinical practice but still lack a noninvasive imaging modality which provides insight into the source or focus of an arrhythmia. Cardiac deformations imaged at high temporal and spatial resolution can be used to elucidate the electrical activation sequence in normal and paced human subjects non-invasively and could potentially aid to better plan and monitor ablation-based arrhythmia treatments. In this study, a novel ultrasound-based method is presented that can be used to quantitatively characterize focal and reentrant arrhythmias. Spatio-temporal maps of the full-view of the atrial and ventricular mechanics were obtained in a single heartbeat, revealing with otherwis

SUBMITTER: Provost J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4591246 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature