Project Title: Spiral Catheter with High Density Fiber Optic Sensors for Atrial Electroanatomic Mapping

Project Duration: May 22 – July 28, 2017 (10 weeks), 40 hours per week.

Project Mentors –

• Primary Faculty Mentor (Name, Affiliation, website and Email/Phone):

Dr. Mable Fok, PhD, Assistant Prof of Photonics, College of Engineering, UGA

Email: mfok@uga.edu Tel: 706-542-2233, http://wave.engr.uga.edu/

• Graduate Student/PostDoc mentors (Name, Affiliation and Email/Phone):

Lily Xu, Lightwave and Microwave Photonics Lab, College of Engineering, UGA

Email: lilyxu@uga.edu, http://wave.engr.uga.edu/

Project Description: Electroanatomical mapping is a nascent technology used frequently in electrophysiological procedures that treat cardiac arrhythmias [1]. These procedures involve creating a 3D map of the heart (Fig. 1a) that incorporates electrical signal referred to as electrograms. Electrograms provide two sets of complementary data: 1) amplitude – which is a reflection of the health of the tissue; and 2) timing relative to a reference – which allows the user to visualize the sequential depolarization of the tissue during an arrhythmia. This information is then used to guide radiofrequency (RF) ablation [2], which aims to disrupt abnormal impulse formation, conduction and propagation. However, the accuracy of mapping strongly depends upon whether the catheter is actually in contact with the tissue. Incorporation of “floating” electrograms, data points in which the catheter is not in contact with cardiac tissue, can dramatically alter the map, often times with deleterious consequences. Our objective is to integrate high-density fiber optic sensors into a clinical cardiac mapping catheter for monitoring electrode-tissue contact force during mapping and RF ablation. The catheter will provide electrode-tissue contact information that has never been obtained before, as well as unprecedented mapping accuracy for guiding RF ablation. The proposed catheter design will increase accuracy, decrease procedural time, and reduce complications.

REU Student Role and Responsibility:

Task 1: Designing and integrating high-density fiber optics sensors into a variable-radius spiral-mapping catheter for monitoring electrode-tissue contact force

Based on our experience in fiber optics based sensor, the student will design an optical fiber with high-density fiber sensors and integrate it into the variable radius multipole spiral-mapping catheter. The high-density fiber sensors enable force sensing at each electrode. Since optical fiber is immune to electromagnetic wave, the fiber sensors will not negatively affect the atrial electroanatomical mapping or the RF ablation.

Task 2: Deploying differential sensors for decorrelating the effect of temperature change due to vital change of patient and RF ablation

The student will incorporate differential configuration in the high-density fiber sensors, where two parallel high-density fiber sensors are integrated on the opposite sides of the spiral catheter. Temperature change will results in the same amount of change in the differential sensors, while contact force change will results in opposite change in the differential sensors. Thus, temperature immune electrode-tissue contact force sensing can be achieved.

Expected Outcome for REU student: The student’s work will contribute to the development of publications, aimed for submission as a conference paper in the area. Upon completion of the entire project, a comprehensive paper on the device will be submitted for journal publication. The device may also be in consideration for commercialization pending experimental outcomes.