Propagation of waves in heterogeneous excitable media
Sergio Alonso* and Markus Baer
Physikalische-Technische Bundesanstalt, Berlin, Germany
Electric pulses propagate in nonlinear cardiac tissue. Normally, the tissue presents heterogeneities and deformations which hinder the stable propagation of the waves and actually experiments show irregular propagation of waves. These defects cannot be avoided, but numerical models of cardiac media do not consider any type of defects and homogeneous models are typically employed for the calculations.
Non-excitable cells and weak connectivity among different cells produce heterogeneities which are usually smaller than the size of the wave. They can, however, affect the normal propagation of the waves.
Here we study the propagation of waves in a
simple model of excitable media for different types of heterogeneities and
calculate the dependence of the velocity and other quantities on the fraction
of heterogeneities. Finally, we compare the results with an effective model
theory.