Influence of conduction heterogeneities on transient spatiotemporal chaos in cardiac excitable media.

Life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation are often based on chaotic spiral or scroll wave dynamics which can be self-terminating. In this work, we investigate the influence of conduction heterogeneities on the duration of such chaotic transients in generic models of excitable cardiac media. We observe that low and medium densities of heterogeneities extend the average transient lifetime, while at high densities very long transients, potentially persistent chaos, and periodic attractors occur.