Nonlinear Sciences – Pattern Formation and Solitons
Scientific paper
2002-04-16
Nonlinear Sciences
Pattern Formation and Solitons
128 pages, 42 figures (29 color, 13 b&w)
Scientific paper
10.1063/1.1504242
It has become widely accepted that the most dangerous cardiac arrhythmias are due to re- entrant waves, i.e., electrical wave(s) that re-circulate repeatedly throughout the tissue at a higher frequency than the waves produced by the heart's natural pacemaker (sinoatrial node). However, the complicated structure of cardiac tissue, as well as the complex ionic currents in the cell, has made it extremely difficult to pinpoint the detailed mechanisms of these life-threatening reentrant arrhythmias. A simplified ionic model of the cardiac action potential (AP), which can be fitted to a wide variety of experimentally and numerically obtained mesoscopic characteristics of cardiac tissue such as AP shape and restitution of AP duration and conduction velocity, is used to explain many different mechanisms of spiral wave breakup which in principle can occur in cardiac tissue. Some, but not all, of these mechanisms have been observed before using other models; therefore, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate them using just one framework model and to explain the different parameter regimes or physiological properties necessary for each mechanism (such as high or low excitability, corresponding to normal or ischemic tissue, spiral tip trajectory types, and tissue structures such as rotational anisotropy and periodic boundary conditions). Each mechanism is compared with data from other ionic models or experiments to illustrate that they are not model-specific phenomena. The fact that many different breakup mechanisms exist has important implications for antiarrhythmic drug design and for comparisons of fibrillation experiments using different species, electromechanical uncoupling drugs, and initiation protocols.
Cherry Elizabeth M.
Evans Steven J.
Fenton Flavio H.
Hastings Harold M.
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