Various embodiments are described herein for detecting a rotor at a location of a heart that experiences cardiac fibrillation. This generally involves obtaining a plurality of bipolar EGMs for a recording duration using a circular bipolar electrode array positioned at the location of the heart; detecting a dominant periodicity Cycle Length (CL) and identifying periodic activations for each bipolar EGM associated with the dominant periodicity CL; tracking the identified periodic activations across each bipolar EGM to define rotational activations and determining when a path taken by the tracked rotational activations corresponds to a rotational activation pattern of a rotor; and detecting the rotor when a number and completeness of the tracked rotational activations meet predefined rotor criteria.