Figure 1.
(A) Catheter tips of both catheters. The FlexibilityTMSE ablation catheter has a laser-cut 4-mm flexible 8Fr tip, which is irrigated from the proximal to distal end through the laser-cut kerfs. The TactiCathTM SE ablation catheter has a 3.5-mm 8Fr tip and has 6-hole irrigation holes on the side of the tip. Both catheters have a single thermocouple embedded within the tip for temperature monitoring, and the distance from the tip is 0.3mm in the FlexAbilityTM SE catheter and 2.64mm in the TactiCathTM SE catheter.
(B) Scheme of catheter orientation. The catheter was placed perpendicularly or parallelly to the tissue.
(C) Scheme of the surface and cross-sectioned lesion. Surface area and lesion volume were calculated from the following formulae:
surface area = π × a/2 × b/2.
lesion volume = (1/6) × π × (e2 × d + c× a2/2).