Wavebreaks and self-termination of spiral waves in a model of human atrial tissue

Abstract

We describe numerical simulations of spiral waves dynamics in the computational model of human atrial tissue with the Courtemanche-Ramirez-Nattel local kinetics. The spiral wave was initiated by cross-field stimulation protocol, with and without preliminary "fatigue" by rapid stimulation of the model tissue for a long time. In all cases the spiral wave has finite lifetime and self-terminates. However the mechanism of self-termination appears to depend on the initiation procedure. Spiral waves in the "fresh" tissue typically terminate after a few rotations via dissipation of the excitation front along the whole of its length. The dynamics of spiral waves in "tired" tissue is characterized by breakups and hypermeander, which also typically leads to self-termination but only after a much longer interval of time. Some features of the observed behaviour can not be explained using existing simplified theories of dynamic instabilities and alternanses. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.