Methods for identifying and tracking phase singularities in computational models of Re-entrant fibrillation

Abstract

The dangerous cardiac arrhythmias of tachycardia and fibrillation are most often sustained by re-entry. Re-entrant waves rotate around a phase singularity, and the identification and tracking of phase singularities allows the complex activity observed in both experimental and computational models of fibrillation to be quantified. In this paper we present preliminary results that compare two methods for identifying phase singularities in a computational model of fibrillation in 2 spatial dimensions. We find that number of phase singularities detected using each method depends on choosing appropriate parameters for each algorithm, but that if an appropriate choice is made there is little difference between the two methods. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.