Three dimensional aspects of re-entry in experimental and numerical models of ventricular fibrillation

V.N. Biktashev, A.V. Holden, S.F. Mironov, A.M. Pertsov, A.V. Zaitsev

Submitted to IJBC 1998/08/27. Accepted 1998/09/22

Ventricular fibrillation is believed to be produced by the breakdown of re-entrant propagation waves of excitation into multiple re-entrant sources. These re-entrant waves may be idealised as spiral waves in two dimensional, and scroll waves in three dimensional excitable media. Optically monitored, simultaneously recorded endocardial and epicardial patterns of activation on the ventricular wall not always show spiral waves. We show that numerical simulations, even with a simple homogeneous excitable medium, can reproduce the key features of the simultaneous endo- and epicardial visualisations of propagating activity, and so these recordings may be interpreted in terms of scroll waves within the ventricular wall.