The Effects of Electrode Configuration on Omnipolar Signals: an In-Silico Approach

Atrial Fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac ar-rhythmia, involving pathological triggers and substrate in the atria. In the clinical catheter laboratory, contact electrograms are an essential tool to characterise AF. Omnipolar electrograms (OE), derived from three or more neighbouring electrodes, are thought to be superior compared to traditional unipolar and bipolar electrograms by eliminating far-field effects and correcting for wavefront incidence angle. We sought to understand the changes in OE morphology under different electrode configurations using 2D simulations of healthy tissue and scarred tissue. Virtual unipolar electrograms (UE) were generated from single electrodes which were used to predict the local electric field and subsequently calculate OEs in cliques of 3, 4, and 6 electrodes at different inter-electrode spacings. Five features were identified on each OE to measure changes in OE morphology under different clique configurations. Additionally, the morphology of the OE signals in the presence of fibrosis was examined. OE signals obtained from scarred tissue are more fractionated compared to healthy tissue. The most appropriate inter-electrode distance for interpreting the OE signals was found to be 2-3mm, using either three or four electrodes.