Condensed Matter > Soft Condensed Matter
[Submitted on 20 Jul 2021 (v1), last revised 15 Apr 2022 (this version, v4)]
Title:Spatiotemporal Organization of Electromechanical Phase Singularities during High-Frequency Cardiac Arrhythmias
View PDFAbstract:Ventricular fibrillation (VF) is a lifethreatening electromechanical dysfunction of the heart associated with complex spatiotemporal dynamics of electrical excitation and mechanical contraction of the heart muscle. It has been hypothesized that VF is driven by three-dimensional (3D) rotating electrical scroll waves, which can be characterized by filament-like electrical phase singularities (EPS). Recently, it was shown that rotating excitation waves during VF are associated with rotating waves of mechanical deformation. 3D mechanical scroll waves and mechanical filaments describing their rotational core were observed in the ventricles by using high-resolution ultrasound. The findings suggest that the spatiotemporal organization of cardiac fibrillation may be assessed from waves of mechanical deformation. However, the complex relationship between excitation and mechanical waves during VF is currently not understood. Here, we study the fundamental nature of mechanical phase singularities (MPS), their spatiotemporal organization and relation with EPS. We demonstrate the existence of two fundamental types of MPS: "paired singularities", which are co-localized with EPS, and "unpaired singularities", which can form independently. We show that the unpaired singularities emerge due to the anisotropy of the active force field, generated by fiber anisotropy in cardiac tissue, and the non-locality of elastic interactions, which jointly induce strong spatiotemporal inhomogeneities in the strain fields. The inhomogeneities lead to the breakup of deformation waves and create MPS, even in the absence of EPS, which are typically associated with excitation wave break. We exploit these insights to develop an approach to discriminate paired and unpaired MPS. Our findings provide a fundamental understanding of the complex spatiotemporal organization of electromechanical waves in the heart.
Submission history
From: Amirhossein Molavi Tabrizi [view email][v1] Tue, 20 Jul 2021 01:49:19 UTC (6,230 KB)
[v2] Wed, 11 Aug 2021 21:59:14 UTC (6,231 KB)
[v3] Wed, 23 Feb 2022 02:34:05 UTC (11,104 KB)
[v4] Fri, 15 Apr 2022 01:11:03 UTC (11,107 KB)
Current browse context:
cond-mat.soft
References & Citations
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?)
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Recommenders and Search Tools
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv Recommender
(What is IArxiv?)
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.