From Disorder to Normal Rhythm: Traveling-Wave Control of Cardiac Arrhythmias

Abstract

Lethal cardiac arrhythmias often involve the occurrence of spiral waves, whose control is essential for the treatment of the disease. While high-voltage shock-based control methods rely on ensuring an abrupt electrical synchronization of the heart, low-energy techniques mostly cause drift-induced termination of these waves. In particular, such a drift can be induced by a spatiotemporal modulation of domain excitability in optogenetically modified cardiac tissue. Here we demonstrate a low-energy optogenetics-based approach to suppress spiral waves via their transient chaotization and rapid drift.