Numerical study of the drift of scroll waves by optical feedback in cardiac tissue.

Nonlinear waves were found in various types of physical, chemical, and biological excitable media, e.g., in heart muscle.

Topological charge-density-vector method of identifying filaments of scroll waves.

Scroll waves have been found in a variety of three-dimensional excitable media, including physical, chemical, and biological origins. Scroll waves in cardiac tissue are of particular significance as they underlie ventricular fibrillation that can cause sudden death. The behavior of a scroll wave is characterized by a line of phase singularity at its organizing center, known as a filament.

Spiral wave drift under optical feedback in cardiac tissue.

Spiral waves occur in various types of excitable media and their dynamics determine the spatial excitation patterns. An important type of spiral wave dynamics is drift, as it can control the position of a spiral wave or eliminate a spiral wave by forcing it to the boundary. In theoretical and experimental studies of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, it was shown that the most direct way to induce the controlled drift of spiral waves is by application of an external electric field.

Control of spiral waves in optogenetically modified cardiac tissue by periodic optical stimulation.

Resonant drift of nonlinear spiral waves occurs in various types of excitable media under periodic stimulation. Recently a novel methodology of optogenetics has emerged, which allows to affect excitability of cardiac cells and tissues by optical stimuli. In this paper we study if resonant drift of spiral waves in the heart can be induced by a homogeneous weak periodic optical stimulation of cardiac tissue.

Finding type and location of the source of cardiac arrhythmias from the averaged flow velocity field using the determinant-trace method.

Life threatening cardiac arrhythmias result from abnormal propagation of nonlinear electrical excitation waves in the heart. Finding the locations of the sources of these waves remains a challenging problem. This is mainly due to the low spatial resolution of electrode recordings of these waves.

Topological charge-density method of identifying phase singularities in cardiac fibrillation.

Spiral waves represent the key motifs of typical self-sustained dynamical patterns in excitable systems such as cardiac tissue. The motion of phase singularities (PSs) that lies at the center of spiral waves captures many qualitative and, in some cases, quantitative features of their complex dynamics. Recent clinical studies suggested that ablating the tissue at PS locations may cure atrial fibrillation.

Removal of pinned scroll waves in cardiac tissues by electric fields in a generic model of three-dimensional excitable media.

Spirals or scroll waves pinned to heterogeneities in cardiac tissues may cause lethal arrhythmias. To unpin these life-threatening spiral waves, methods of wave emission from heterogeneities (WEH) induced by low-voltage pulsed DC electric fields (PDCEFs) and circularly polarized electric fields (CPEFs) have been used in two-dimensional (2D) cardiac tissues. Nevertheless, the unpinning of scroll waves in three-dimensional (3D) cardiac systems is much more difficult than that of spiral waves in 2D cardiac systems, and there are few reports on the removal of pinned scroll waves in 3D cardiac tissues by electric fields.

Wave trains induced by circularly polarized electric fields in cardiac tissues.

Clinically, cardiac fibrillation caused by spiral and turbulent waves can be terminated by globally resetting electric activity in cardiac tissues with a single high-voltage electric shock, but it is usually associated with severe side effects. Presently, a promising alternative uses wave emission from heterogeneities induced by a sequence of low-voltage uniform electric field pulses. Nevertheless, this method can only emit waves locally near obstacles in turbulent waves and thereby requires multiple obstacles to globally synchronize myocardium and thus to terminate fibrillation.

Core solutions of rigidly rotating spiral waves in highly excitable media.

Analytical spiral wave solutions for reaction-diffusion equations play an important role in studying spiral wave dynamics. In this paper, we focus on such analytical solutions in the case of highly excitable media. We present numerical evidence that, for rigidly rotating spiral waves in highly excitable media, the species values in the spiral core region do harmonic oscillations but not relaxation ones, and their amplitudes grow linearly with the distance from the rotation center.

Chiralities of spiral waves and their transitions.

The chiralities of spiral waves usually refer to their rotation directions (the turning orientations of the spiral temporal movements as time elapses) and their curl directions (the winding orientations of the spiral spatial geometrical structures themselves). Traditionally, they are the same as each other. Namely, they are both clockwise or both counterclockwise.

Electric-field-sustained spiral waves in subexcitable media.

We present numerical evidence that, in the presence of a suitable electric field, an isolated broken plane wave retracting originally in subexcitable media can propagate continuously and eventually evolve into a rotating spiral. Simulations for the FitzHugh-Nagumo, the Barkley, and the Oregonator models are carried out and the same electric-field-sustained spiral phenomena are observed. Semianalytical results in the framework of a kinematic theory are quantitatively consistent with the numerical results.

Influence of impurities on solitons in the nonlinear LC transmission line.

This paper studies the propagation of solitons in the nonlinear LC transmission line (NLCTL) with capacitor impurity. Based on Kirchhoff's laws, the numerical simulation shows that the amplitude of the soliton will be increased or decreased when it is close to the positive or negative impurity. Then, it will be split into reflected and transmitted waves by both the positive and negative impurities.