Computer simulation of a novel technique for Radio-Frequency Ablation of ventricular arrhythmias

Ventricular Tachycardia (VT) is a rapid arrhythmia, most commonly due to reentrant electrical activity in the heart. A common treatment for VT is Radio-Frequency Ablation (RFA), which is minimally invasive, but requires maintenance of VT until the target site for ablation is determined. Most patients with VT cannot tolerate this maintenance phase due to hemodynamic instability and for those who are hemodynamically stable, the RFA procedure is successful in permanently terminating the VT in only approximately half of the cases. Therefore, the need for an RFA procedure that accurately localizes the site for ablation, or exit site of the reentry circuit, and is safe for unstable patients is evident. We believe utilization of the Single Equivalent Moving Dipole model and inverse problem in cardiology will prove to be efficient in localizing the exit site of the reentry circuit and guiding the ablation catheter to that localized site during the RFA procedure. In principle, our RFA technique only requires a single beat of VT to localize the exit site of the reentry circuit. The objective of this thesis is to determine in a simulation model if one can guide a catheter to the exit site of the reentry circuit using body surface potentials in order to ablate that site with radio-frequency energy.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Rosbury, Tamara S

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Richard J. Cohen.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/38312
• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Identifier URI

http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/38312

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38312