QUANTITATIVE CHARACTERIZATION OF FIBRILLATORY SPATIOTEMPORAL ORGANIZATION

Described is a method for monitoring the spatiotemporal organization of atrial arrhythmias, especially atrial fibrillation, based on an analysis of sequences of activation patterns obtained from a particular set of atrial recording sites. This analysis measures the degree of order change in the sequence of activation patterns, or of the time between order changes. Electrogram signals produced by atrial fibrillation are acquired simultaneously from sites adjacent to atrial tissue using multipole electrode catheters. These signals subsequently are filtered and processed to obtain a group of time series which manifest peaks at the latencies of maximal energy in the original data; when these peaks occur are the latencies that are defined as activation events. The activation events from each sampled site are ordered with respect to activation events from each of the other sites, and are translated into corresponding activation patterns, which are determined by the specific spatiotemporal activation sequence associated with each activation event. Each activation pattern in the sequence then is compared with subsequent observed patterns to determine if any spatiotemporal order change has occurred, and if so, to what extent; also, the distribution of observed activation patterns is evaluated for an additional characterization of atrial fibrillation.