Spiral wave drift under optical feedback in cardiac tissue

Abstract

Spiral waves occur in various types of excitable media and their dynamics determine the spatial excitation patterns. An important type of spiral wave dynamics is drift, as it can control the position of a spiral wave or eliminate a spiral wave by forcing it to the boundary. In theoretical and experimental studies of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, it was shown that the most direct way to induce the controlled drift of spiral waves is by application of an external electric field. Mathematically such drift occurs due to the onset of additional gradient terms in the Laplacian operator describing excitable media. However, this approach does not work for cardiac excitable tissue, where an external electric field does not result in gradient terms. In this paper, we propose a method of how to induce a directed linear drift of spiral waves in cardiac tissue, which can be realized as an optical feedback control in tissue where photosensitive ion channels are expressed. We illustrate our method by using the FitzHugh-Nagumo model for cardiac tissue and the generic model of photosensitive ion channels. We show that our method works for continuous and discrete light sources and can effectively move spiral waves in cardiac tissue, or eliminate them by collisions with the boundary or with another spiral wave. We finally implement our method by using a biophysically motivated photosensitive ion channel model included to the Luo-Rudy model for cardiac cells and show that the proposed feedback control also induces directed linear drift of spiral waves in a wide range of light intensities.

The role of the Cx43/Cx45 gap junction voltage gating on wave propagation and arrhythmogenic activity in cardiac tissue

“…in 52 ), many authors have addressed the drift of spiral waves in cardiac tissue in both theoretical 53 and experimental studies 21 . Studies have demonstrated that the drift can be induced by anatomic inhomogeneity 54 , changes in temperature 55 or external electric 56 , 57 , and even optical, stimulation 29 , 58 . Some studies have also demonstrated a putative role of junctional coupling in the dynamics of spiral waves in cardiac tissue.…”

Control of spiral waves in myocardial tissue by optogenetics and temperature

“…This allows for light-induced drift of spiral waves [34,35], chiral changes [36], control of turbulence [37], and other manipulations within myocardial tissue.…”

Chirality and curvature determine the meandering of spirals in multilayer excitable media

“…It is claimed that spirals might undergo parallel and circular drifts. Besides, the frequency of rotation, the chirality, or handedness, [26,42] and curvature [16,43] are critical aspects of a spiral pattern. Hence, one might speculate the given feature might also affect the spirals’ interplay in a multilayer configuration.…”

“…Consequently, several other strategies have been developed, such as electric pulse [20,21], field pacing [22] and recently polarized electric fields [23,24]. Optogenetic manipulation in extended models with photosensitive ion channels [25,26] and feedback-controlled forcing of spiral waves are cutting-edge methods employed to destabilize rotating tips [27]. Given the spatial arrangement of the medium, obstacles of proper size can lead spiral seeds to drift away from the heterogeneous site [28,29].…”