The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 24, 2001
Filed:
Sep. 24, 1999
Gary S. Falwell, Manchester, NH (US);
C. R. Band, Inc., Murray Hill, NJ (US);
Abstract
The system and methods of the invention gauge the amount or quality of the contact between body tissue and one or more electrodes supported on a catheter. In further aspects, the invention concerns methods for controlling power delivery to particular electrodes on a catheter in response to tissue contact data derived from that electrode or other electrodes during the ablation procedure. The invention monitors and processes information concerning the number of pulses of pulsed radio-frequency energy that are delivered during an ablation procedure. The amount or quality of tissue contact is gauged by comparing the number of pulses delivered to a particular electrode during the interval to either the number of pulses delivered to at least one other electrode of the plural electrodes or data derived during the ablation procedure. The system and method can provide a display of the gauge of tissue contact among the various electrodes and also can automatically control distribution of pulsed RF energy in response to the gauge of tissue contact.