Identifying locations of re-entrant drivers from patient-specific distribution of fibrosis in the left atrium

This study used image-derived LA models to explore the dynamics of RD stabilization in fibrotic regions and generate maps of RD locations. LA models with patient-specific geometry and fibrosis distribution were derived from late gadolinium enha nced magnetic resonance imaging of 6 AF patients. In each model, RDs were initiated at multiple locations, and their trajectories were tracked and overlaid on the LA fibrosis distributions to identify the most likely regions where the RDs stabilized. The simulations showed that the RD dynamics were strongly influenced by the amount and spatial distribution of fibrosis. In patients with fibrosis burden greater than 25%, RDs anchored to specific locations near large fibrotic patches. In patients with fibrosis burden below 25%, RDs either moved near small fibrotic patches or anchored to anatomica l features. The patient-specific maps of RD locations showed that areas that harboured the RDs were much smaller than the entire fibrotic areas, indicating potential targets for ablation therapy. Ablating the predicted locations and connecting them to the existing pulmonary vein ablation lesions was the most effective in-silico ablation strategy.
Source: PLoS Computational Biology - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: research