The Mathematical Modelling of Inhomogeneities in Ventricular Tissue

Shajahan, TK and Sinha, Sitabhra and Pandit, Rahul (2009) The Mathematical Modelling of Inhomogeneities in Ventricular Tissue. In: International Workshop on Complex Dynamics of Physiological Systems, FEB, 2007, Calcutta, INDIA, pp. 51-67.

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Abstract

Cardiac arrhythmias such as ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF) are the leading cause of death in the industrialised world. There is a growing consensus that these arrhythmias arise because of the formation of spiral waves of electrical activation in cardiac tissue; unbroken spiral waves are associated with VT and broken ones with VF. Several experimental studies have been carried out to determine the effects of inhomogeneities in cardiac tissue on such arrhythmias. We give a brief overview of such experiments, and then an introduction to partial-differential-equation models for ventricular tissue. We show how different types of inhomogeneities can be included in such models, and then discuss various numerical studies, including our own, of the effects of these inhomogeneities on spiral-wave dynamics. The most remarkable qualitative conclusion of our studies is that the spiral-wave dynamics in such systems depends very sensitively on the positions of these inhomogeneities

Item Type:	Conference Paper
Publication:	Complex Dynamics in Physiological Systems: From Heart to Brain
Publisher:	Springer
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Springer.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	08 Jan 2010 10:11
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:25
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/18773

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