Sascha Krueger1, Ronald Holthuizen2,
Jouke Smink2, Steffen Weiss1, Oliver Lips1,
Bernd David1, Daniel Wirtz1, Steen Fjord Pedersen3,
Dennis Caulfield4, Julian Bostock4, Gang Gao4,
Phani Chinchapatnam4, Tobias Schaeffter4, Reza Razavi4
1Philips Research Europe, Hamburg,
Germany; 2Philips Healthcare, Best, Netherlands; 3MR
Research Centre, Skejby Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark; 4Division of
Imaging Sciences, King's College, London, United Kingdom
Cardiac
arrhythmias, e.g. atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia, are
increasingly treated by electrophysiological (EP) interventions. Applying MR
for guiding these interventions offers advantages like 3D visualization of
the cardiac soft tissue in relation to the catheter, visualization of the
treatment effect and absence of ionizing radiation. Making the step towards
clinical MR-guided EP interventions requires a focus on RF safety of the
devices, localization accuracy of the catheters, guidance of the procedure,
intra-cardiac signal quality and procedure workflow. Here, an MR-EP suite
based on an MR-EP Navigator application with a real-time interface to the MR
system and therapy equipment is demonstrated along with specialized MR-EP
catheters. These catheters are based on RF-safe concepts for both, MR- and EP
functionality. RF-safety, localization accuracy and EP signal quality of
these devices, and the operation of the MR-EP suite and the workflow of the
MR-EP Navigator are demonstrated in a series of pre-clinical MR-guided EP
experiments.