Identification of fibrillatory sources by measuring causal relationships

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a complex arrhythmia whose mechanisms of onset, maintenance and termination are not yet understood. Recent studies have demonstrated that the isolation of specific regions of the atria can terminate the arrhythmia. These results suggest a hierarchical organization where certain parts of the atria are determining the electrical activity of the whole tissue, acting as electrical sources. In this work, we present and validate a methodology able to identify atrial sources during AF by using causal relationships. The performance of the presented technique has been illustrated by using mathematical models and real signals obtained with optical mapping under different fibrillatory scenarios.