Yue Chen Receives NIH Grant to Research Robotic Platform for Treating Atrial Fibrillation

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most treated heart arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, in the U.S. affecting ~ 1 in 100 Americans. Many patients are treated successfully with medications however, for patients that do not respond to medication-based regimens, catheter/radiofrequency ablation, is the most frequently used treatment. Unfortunately, many of these patients experience and recurrence of their AF symptoms after treatment due to difficulties in catheter manipulation in identifying and treating the affected sites.  

To address these issues in AF treatment Yue Chen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech & Emory and team will use this new award to develop an MR-tracked catheterization toolset  with an MR-enabled intraoperative navigation feedback framework and robotic hardware system. Their innovative approach is the first to integrate accurate catheter manipulation and CTCF feedback with MRI-based monitoring and lesion assessment to provide a unified system for AF ablation planning, treatment, and assessment. The goal is to develop a  complete system for simultaneous catheter and guiding sheath manipulation that enables accurate catheter position and contact force control and supports the creation of continuous and chronic ablation lesions for reducing the recurrence of arrhythmia in treated patients.

 - Christa Ernst