Atrial Thickness Mapping for EP Ablation using Black-Blood Restricted Field of View MRI

Peter Koken¹, Ronald Holthuizen², Sascha Krueger¹, Harald Sepp Heese¹, Steffen Weiss¹, Jouke Smink², Reza Razavi³, Tobias Schaeffter³

The treatment of cardiac arrhythmias by RF ablation has grown recently. Knowledge of atrial wall thickness can provide information for more accurate RF ablation power settings, which may result in better transmural lesions. In this work, we propose the use of a set of small, localized scans with high resolution along the direction perpendicular to the atrial wall to provide accurate thickness information at separate locations on the atrial wall. A segmented 3D surface of the left atrium is used to plan the perpendicular beams. An interpolation algorithm is used to calculate a thickness map for the whole left atrium.