Control of spiral wave and spatiotemporal chaos in two-layer aging cardiac tissues

Abstract

Cardiac arrhythmias can be caused by the occurrence of electrical spiral waves and spatiotemporal chaos in the cardiac tissues, as well as by the changes of cardiac tissues resulting from the electrical coupling of cardiomyocytes to fibroblasts (M-F coupling). How to control the arrhythmia induced by spiral wave or spatiotemporal chaos is the problem which has attracted much attention of scientists. In this paper, a two-layer composite medium is constructed by using cardiomyocytes and fibroblasts. Luo-Rudy phase I cardiac model and passive model of fibroblast are used to study the effects of the M-F coupling on the formation of spiral wave and the control of spiral wave and spatiotemporal chaos in a two-layer composite medium. A control scheme that the spiral waves and spatiotemporal chaos are controlled by increasing the coupling strength between cells is proposed. The numerical results show that the M-F coupling has an important influence on the dynamics of spiral wave. With the increase of the density of fibroblasts, the M-F coupling may result in spiral wave meandering and spiral wave breaking into spatiotemporal chaos, and even induce the transition from spatiotemporal chaos (or spiral wave) to no wave. The eliminating spiral wave and spatiotemporal chaos in the composite medium by increasing the coupling strength between cells is only effective in most of cases, depending on the role played by fibroblasts. When fibroblasts act as current sinks for the cardiomyocyte, the spiral wave and spatiotemporal chaos are effectively eliminated only in most of cases by increasing the coupling strength between cells, and the controlled area is small. When fibroblasts act as a current source for the cardiomyocyte, increasing the coupling strength between cells to a value higher than a critical value can effectively terminate spiral wave and spatiotemporal chaos, and the controllable area is greatly increased compared with the former. Increasing the coupling strength between cardiomyocytes is a key factor in controlling the spiral waves and spatiotemporal chaos.