Dynamics of cardiac tissue

Revolution will not be televised
(but it will be on video).

Spatially complex, high-dimensional dynamics underlies many arrhythmic disorders of the heart. Within the last few years our ability both to observe this spatiotemporal cardiac dynamics and simulate it numerically, has made great strides. The next few links to the TheVisualHeart.org website of Elizabeth Cherry and Flavio Fenton give you a sense for what is attainable today.

the visual heart - play with a beating 3D heart
sinus rhythm - a healthy heart's electrical activity
ventricular tachycardia - bizarre spiraling ventricular waveforms
ventricular fibrillation - heart gone spatiotemporally chaotic - death within minutes, unless reset to sinus rhythm by electrical defibrillation

We propose to suppress cardiac arrhythmias in a gentle manner,

 

by replacing the computationally intensive direct numerical simulations by a description of cardiac dynamics in terms of a finite repertoire of pre-computed exact steady and time-periodic solutions of detailed ionic models of cardiac tissues, and then nudging the heart dynamics in desired direction.