Regensburg 2010 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 27: Networks: From Topology to Dynamics V (joint session of BP, DY, SOE)

DY 27.3: Talk

Thursday, March 25, 2010, 16:30–16:45, H44

Feedback-mediated control of a spiral wave in a bidomain model of cardiac tissue — •Ekaterina Zhuchkova, Vladimir Zykov, and Harald Engel — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

At the moment anti-tachycardia pacing (ATP) is the only low-energy therapy for ventricular tachyarrhythmias and it would be desirable since it prevents adverse side effects. However, ATP is not robust since its success/failure depends on many factors [1]. Using realistic bidomain model for simulation of electrical activity in cardiac tissue together with a simplified Fenton-Karma ionic model for a cell, we show that spiral waves in the heart could be eliminated by repetitive extracellular stimulation. A spiral wave core can be guided towards boundaries by feedback forcing along a one-dimensional registering electrode [2]. Every time the spiral wave front is tangent to the registering electrode, an extracellular current is applied through stimulating electrodes. The amplitude of the stimulation is much less than the single-shock defibrillation threshold, which gives a possibility to use the proposed method as an alternative low-voltage defibrillation strategy.

[1] E. Zhuchkova and H. Engel, Robustness of local forcing in inhibition of reentry, IPACS Open Access Library (2009), accepted.

[2] J. Schlesner, V. S. Zykov, H. Brandtstädter, I. Gerdes and H. Engel, Efficient control of spiral wave location in an excitable medium with localized heterogeneities, NJP 10, 015003 (2008).