Patent ID: 9545210
Date: 2017-01-17
CPC Classifications: A61B

Claim:
1. A computer-assisted method for quantitatively characterizing atrial fibrillation in a patient, comprising: recording time series of bipolar atrial fibrillation (AF) signals between a first site and its neighboring sites in a patient's atria using two or more electrodes; calculating a similarity index (SI) vector by a computer system based on the bipolar AF signal between the first site and its neighboring sites, comprising the steps of: constructing an SI vector field based on SI vectors and the propagating direction of the bipolar AF signal at different sites; calculating Curl and Divergence of the SI vector field; calculating Rotor Identification (RI) using a product of Curl and Divergence to obtain a map of RI in the patient's atria; calculating Focal Identification (FoI) using a square of Divergence to obtain a map of FoI in the patient's atria; determining one or more critical regions in the patient's atria by locating local peaks respectively in the map of RI and local peaks in the map of FoI; and modifying the one or more critical regions in the patient's atria with complex fractionated electrogram (CFE) ablation.