A system for assessing cardiac fibrillogenicity in a patient by calculating the total length of one or more ablation lesions required to treat cardiac fibrillation, the system comprising: a data collection unit to obtain one or more measurements for a duration indicative of a number of electrical circuit cores and distribution of the electrical circuit cores across a cardiac tissue substrate in the patient's heart in response to electrical activity in the cardiac tissue substrate, wherein the w data collection unit comprises an index electrode and an indifferent electrode on a catheter, wherein the said electrodes are configured to be in an orthogonal, close, and unipolar configuration where an inter-electrode axis from the index electrode to the indifferent electrode is orthogonal to the tissue surface, and a distance between the index electrode and indifferent electrode is between 0.1 mrr and 1 mm; a processing unit configured to generate a map of the one or more measurements, to register said map onto a representation of the patient's heart, to apply a set of executable instructions to the map to define an optimal placement of one or more ablation lesions in the cardiac tissue substrate and minimize total length of the one or more ablation lesions configured to provide the greatest likelihood of producing wave extinction, and to calculate total length of the at least one ablation lesion, wherein the optimal placement is determined by repeating steps of calculating a total length of successive sample sets of lesions, comparing the total length of each successive sample set of lesions to a predetermined length threshold, and determining a level of optimization of each successive sample set of lesions until the one or more optimization criteria are met, and further wherein optimization criteria are indicative of the level to which a sample set of lesions can minimize or terminate cardiac fibrillation; and a storage unit to store data and executable instructions to be used by the processing unit; and wherein an electrical circuit core is a center of a reentrant circuit on the cardiac tissue substrate. a data collection unit to obtain one or more measurements for a duration indicative of a number of electrical circuit cores and distribution of the electrical circuit cores across a cardiac tissue substrate in the patient's heart in response to electrical activity in the cardiac tissue substrate, wherein the w data collection unit comprises an index electrode and an indifferent electrode on a catheter, wherein the said electrodes are configured to be in an orthogonal, close, and unipolar configuration where an inter-electrode axis from the index electrode to the indifferent electrode is orthogonal to the tissue surface, and a distance between the index electrode and indifferent electrode is between 0.1 mrr and 1 mm; a processing unit configured to generate a map of the one or more measurements, to register said map onto a representation of the patient's heart, to apply a set of executable instructions to the map to define an optimal placement of one or more ablation lesions in the cardiac tissue substrate and minimize total length of the one or more ablation lesions configured to provide the greatest likelihood of producing wave extinction, and to calculate total length of the at least one ablation lesion, wherein the optimal placement is determined by repeating steps of calculating a total length of successive sample sets of lesions, comparing the total length of each successive sample set of lesions to a predetermined length threshold, and determining a level of optimization of each successive sample set of lesions until the one or more optimization criteria are met, and further wherein optimization criteria are indicative of the level to which a sample set of lesions can minimize or terminate cardiac fibrillation; and a storage unit to store data and executable instructions to be used by the processing unit; and wherein an electrical circuit core is a center of a reentrant circuit on the cardiac tissue substrate.