Cardiac anatomy relative to ablation therapies

Electrophysiologists who perform cardiac ablations commonly rely on fluoroscopy and three-dimensional electroanatomical maps to navigate catheters through extremely complex and highly variable functional anatomies. However, limited mapping resolution often does not provide sufficient detail relative to actual anatomical barriers and structures. In this chapter, we provide examples of a wide range of internal anatomical structures within human hearts and discuss how they can be associated with procedural challenges. Additionally, we introduce the Atlas of Human Cardiac Anatomy website that provides free access to thousands of videos of functional anatomies as well as still images, MRI and microCT scans, computational models, and other novel images from over 500 human heart specimens. With over two decades of anatomical studies, the Visible Heart^® Laboratories have built an expansive knowledge base that can provide detailed anatomical educational visualizations for electrophysiologists.