Start with the physical problem inside a beating heart. To treat atrial fibrillation, an operator threads a catheter up into the left atrium and destroys thin bands of the heart's inner lining that are firing stray electrical signals. For years the tool of choice burned or froze that tissue. The newer approach, pulsed field ablation (PFA), does something different: it kills the target cells with short, high-voltage electrical pulses that punch holes in their membranes — a phenomenon called irreversible electroporation, or IRE. A published patent application, US20260183052A1, assigned to Biosense Webster (Israel) Ltd., is directed at the business end of that tool: the small, flat structure at the catheter tip that both delivers the pulses and, in the same footprint, senses the tissue it is touching.

In plain terms, the invention is a planar end effector — a paddle-like tip that lies flat along the catheter shaft and then flexes away from that axis when it presses against the atrial wall. The paddle carries elongated ablation electrodes running most of its length. Applying a voltage between a pair of those electrodes drives the electroporation field into the tissue directly beneath them. Because the electrodes are long and can be paired in different combinations, the same tip can shape where the field goes rather than firing from a single fixed point.

A catheter is presented having a planar end effector with elongated ablation electrodes configured to provide electrical signals to achieve IRE in target tissue. The planar end effector can be aligned along a longitudinal axis of a shaft of the catheter and configured to flex away from the longitudinal axis when making contact with tissue. Bipolar electrical signals can be applied between the elongated ablation electrodes in various pair combinations to achieve PFA. The end effector may also include diagnostic electrodes configured to receive electrical signals from tissue to map tissue, pairs of tissue contact electrodes to determine which portions of the end effector are in contact with tissue, or reference electrodes configured to measure blood voltage.— PLANAR END EFFECTOR FOR ATRIAL FIBRILLATION ABLATION BY PULSE FIELD ABLATION, US20260183052A1

Why put mapping and ablation on the same paddle

The detail that makes this more than a bare electrode is what else the application packs onto the planar body. Alongside the ablation electrodes, the end effector can carry diagnostic electrodes that are electrically isolated from the ablation ones and used to read the heart's own electrical signals — in other words, to map the tissue. It can also carry pairs of tissue-contact electrodes that tell the system which parts of the paddle are actually pressed against the wall, and reference electrodes that measure the voltage of the blood pool itself. Think of it as combining the surveyor and the excavator on one head: the same tip that delivers the pulse can first confirm it is touching tissue, read the local signal, and give the console a baseline to measure against.

The independent claim describes the ablation electrodes as each spanning at least half the total length of the end effector, defining its distal portion. Dependent portions of the disclosure describe arranging four combinable ablation electrodes per side, so that individual electrodes can be ganged together into a larger effective electrode when a bigger field is wanted. Others describe a serpentine electrode shape that winds around three of the four sides of a diagnostic electrode — a layout that lets a sensing point sit inside the ablation zone without the two shorting together. The disclosed pulses run between roughly 600 and 1,200 volts across electrode pairs, the high-voltage regime that PFA relies on.

A tip built like a flexible circuit

The planar end effector does not stand alone. Biosense Webster published a cluster of nine applications in the same July 2 drop, and read together they describe how a tip like this is actually built and steered. Several are about the flexible circuit that carries the electrodes and their wiring. US20260183055A1 describes reinforcing that flexible circuit by routing its electrical traces in bends and stacking offset layers, and US20260182888A1 adds a localized stiffening layer so one zone of the circuit flexes less than another. Both address the same engineering tension: the tip has to be limp enough to collapse into a delivery sheath and conform to tissue, yet stiff enough in the right places to hold its electrodes where they belong.

Two more applications add navigation. US20260182900A1 puts a sensing loop — a small coil printed onto the same flexible substrate as the electrodes — that generates a current when it sits in a magnetic field, giving the console the position of the tip. That is the magnetic position-tracking approach that electroanatomic mapping systems use to draw a catheter's location on a 3-D model without constant X-ray. Putting the coil on the same circuit as the electrodes means position, contact, mapping, and ablation all report from one structure.

The remaining applications explore alternate tip geometries for the same job. US20260183054A1 describes a spined membrane whose leaves fan out with free distal ends, US20260183032A1 a semi-spherical or semi-conical membrane carrying flexible circuits on both faces, and US20260182889A1 a curved basket of spines that bow outward. US20260183051A1 goes further, integrating a focal ablation tip with an expandable mapping-and-ablation array on one shaft, and US20260182887A1 adds friction-reducing skids so the electrode-bearing tip slides along tissue without snagging.

The throughline across the cluster is consistent, and the planar end effector is its clearest single example: build the catheter tip as a printed circuit that carries ablation electrodes, diagnostic electrodes, contact sensing, and a position coil together, then vary the shape — flat paddle, fanned leaves, curved basket, dome — for the anatomy at hand. The usual caveat holds. These are published applications, not granted patents, and a filing describes what is disclosed and claimed, not what has cleared examination or shipped as a product. What the record shows plainly is a design language: put the whole sensing-and-ablating job on one flexible-circuit tip, and let its geometry do the rest.