Are multi-electrode arrays able to differentiate anatomical from functional reentries in an excitable sheet?

摘要

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is one of the most common cardiac arrhythmias seen in clinical practice. Anatomical and functional reentries seem to be important in driving AF. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify and locate them. Multi-electrode array systems are increasingly being used to map the atrial electrical activity in humans. We use here computer simulations of reentries and process electrograms to perform phase maps, phase singularity (PS) detections and dominant frequency (DF) maps, in order to study if the multi-electrode array systems can distinguish properly between anatomical and functional reentries. Our results show that although there is no difference between phase maps corresponding to anatomical and functional reentries (all they exhibit rotors and therefore, in all cases a trajectory is tracked through the PS detections), overlapping the trajectories with the DF maps obtained it is able to distinguish anatomical from functional reentries.