Personalized computational models based on clinical imaging of fibrotic tissue distribution offer a promising approach to understand arrhythmia mechanisms and plan individualized catheter ablation.
: Atrial arrhythmias involving a fibrotic substrate are an important cause of morbidity and mortality. In many cases, effective treatment of such rhythm disorders is severely hindered by a lack of mechanistic understanding relating features of fibrotic remodelling to dynamics of re-entrant arrhythmia. With the advent of clinical imaging modalities capable of resolving the unique fibrosis spatial pattern present in the atria of each individual patient, a promising new research trajectory has emerged in which personalized computational models are used to analyse mechanistic underpinnings of arrhythmia dynamics based on the distribution of fibrotic tissue. In this review, we first present findings that have yielded a robust and detailed biophysical representation of fibrotic substrate electrophysiological properties. Then, we summarize the results of several recent investigations seeking to use organ-scale models of the fibrotic human atria to derive new insights on mechanisms of arrhythmia perpetuation and to develop novel strategies for model-assisted individualized planning of catheter ablation procedures for atrial arrhythmias.
Boyle et al. (Tue,) conducted a review in Atrial arrhythmia. Personalized computational modelling was evaluated. Personalized computational models based on clinical imaging of fibrotic tissue distribution offer a promising approach to understand arrhythmia mechanisms and plan individualized catheter ablation.