Fractional diffusion models demonstrated that structural heterogeneity underlies relevant characteristics of cardiac electrical propagation, including conduction effects on action potential morphology.
Fractional diffusion models provide a novel mathematical approach to represent structural heterogeneity in cardiac electrical propagation, helping to explain the dispersion of repolarization.
Impulse propagation in biological tissues is known to be modulated by structural heterogeneity. In cardiac muscle, improved understanding on how this heterogeneity influences electrical spread is key to advancing our interpretation of dispersion of repolarization. We propose fractional diffusion models as a novel mathematical description of structurally heterogeneous excitable media, as a means of representing the modulation of the total electric field by the secondary electrical sources associated with tissue inhomogeneities. Our results, analysed against in vivo human recordings and experimental data of different animal species, indicate that structural heterogeneity underlies relevant characteristics of cardiac electrical propagation at tissue level. These include conduction effects on action potential (AP) morphology, the shortening of AP duration along the activation pathway and the progressive modulation by premature beats of spatial patterns of dispersion of repolarization. The proposed approach may also have important implications in other research fields involving excitable complex media.
Bueno‐Orovio et al. (Wed,) conducted a other in Cardiac electrical propagation. Fractional diffusion models was evaluated. Fractional diffusion models demonstrated that structural heterogeneity underlies relevant characteristics of cardiac electrical propagation, including conduction effects on action potential morphology.