Effect of multi-electrode configurations on accuracy of rotor detection in the atria

Multi-electrode catheters are increasingly being used to localize rotors that drive atrial fibrillation. Our objective is to analyze the effects of the multi-electrodes geometrical configuration on the accuracy of localizing rotors using computer simulations. We simulated rotor detection in: 1) a 3D cube of tissue and various multi-electrode array configurations, varying the electrodes-to-tissue distance (d=0.9 to 19.8 mm) and the inter-electrode distance (d ie =0.9 to 18 mm), and 2) a 3D realistic atrial model and an intra-cardiac basket catheter in two locations inside the right atrium (RA). Rotors were detected by localizing phase singularity points (PSs) on phase maps based on the Hilbert transform. Our simulations showed that for the 3D block, the best PS trajectory detection (sensitivity ∼85%) was obtained at d=d ie =0.9 mm. Increasing d decreased the sensitivity. However, for the highest d ie it increased from 30% to 53% by increasing d. For the rotor simulated in the RA, the basket achieved 90% accuracy in detection of the rotor in a position where the averaged distance between the electrodes and the rotor was 0.96 cm. The accuracy decreased to 35% when the distance increased to 3.05 cm. Moreover, false rotors appeared on the basket's phase maps due to the far field sources and the EGMs interpolation.