Key result
Spatial inhomogeneities in in vitro cardiac tissues cause non-trivial wave dynamics, including entrainment among spiral waves and the generation of complex-oscillatory spiral waves.
This study demonstrates that spatial inhomogeneities in in vitro cardiac cell cultures significantly alter spiral wave dynamics, providing insights into the mechanisms underlying cardiac arrhythmias like fibrillation.
Understanding spiral reentry wave dynamics in cardiac systems is important since it underlies various cardiac arrhythmia including cardiac fibrillation. Primary cultures of dissociated cardiac cells have been a convenient and useful system for studying cardiac wave dynamics, since one can carry out systematic and quantitative studies with them under well-controlled environments. One key drawback of the dissociated cell culture is that, inevitably, some spatial inhomogeneities in terms of cell types and density, and/or the degree of gap junction connectivity, are introduced to the system during the preparation. These unintentional spatial inhomogeneities can cause some non-trivial wave dynamics, for example, the entrainment dynamics among different spiral waves and the generation of complex-oscillatory spiral waves. The aim of this paper is to quantify these general phenomena in an in vitro cardiac system and provide explanations for them with a simple physiological model having some realistic spatial inhomogeneities incorporated.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Woo et al. (2008) studied Cardiac arrhythmia. Spatial inhomogeneities (cell types, density, gap junction connectivity) was evaluated on Entrainment dynamics among different spiral waves and generation of complex-oscillatory spiral waves. Spatial inhomogeneities in in vitro cardiac tissues cause non-trivial wave dynamics, including entrainment among spiral waves and the generation of complex-oscillatory spiral waves.
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: