Tensor-based noninvasive atrial fibrillation complexity index for catheter ablation

Lucas de Sousa Abdalah (1) , Pedro Marinho R. de Oliveira (2) , Walter Freitas (1) , Vicente Zarzoso (2)

1 UFC - Universidade Federal do Ceará = Federal University of Ceará
2 Laboratoire d'Informatique, Signaux, et Systèmes de Sophia-Antipolis (I3S) / Equipe SIGNAL

Due to the cost-efficiency of the ECG, the interest in noninvasive techniques to assess atrial fibrillation (AF) electrophysiological complexity is increasingly high. Still, ECG-based methods to measure AF complexity are limited in clinical practice and need estimation of the atrial activity (AA) signal from sufficiently long ECG recordings. The present work proposes an algorithm for tensor decomposition called constrained alternating group lasso (CAGL) as a noninvasive tool to quantify AF complexity. Experiments with a database of 59 ECG recordings from 20 patients suffering from persistent AF show that CAGL is able to both extract the AA and quantify its complexity from very short ECG recordings (1.06 ± 0.20 s). All the patients had undergone step-wise catheter ablation (CA) that ended in procedural AF termination. CAGL is applied on the ECG recording before CA and at each step procedure, measur- ing the rank of the tensor that provides the AA signal. It is observed that such rank decreases at each step of the CA procedure, showing a less complex AA signal as the ablation is performed. A statistical correlation between AA complexity measured by the new index and AF recurrence after CA is observed. The proposed index is a potential tool to guide CA procedures in real time.

Domaines: Traitement du signal et de l'image [eess.SP]; Ingénierie biomédicale

Lucas de Sousa Abdalah, Pedro Marinho R. de Oliveira, Walter Freitas, Vicente Zarzoso. Tensor-based noninvasive atrial fibrillation complexity index for catheter ablation. Computing in Cardiology, Sep 2020, Rimini, Italy. ⟨hal-03152833⟩