uri physics colloquium

Biophysics of cardiac arrhythmias.

Alexander V. Panfilov,  Professor, Physics Department, Gent University, Gent, Belgium

Date: Thursday , April 26, 2018

Time: 4.00 pm 

Location : East Hall, Room 112

abstract

Cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death is the leading cause of death accounting for about 1 death in 10 in industrialized countries. Although cardiac arrhythmias has been studied for well over a century, their underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. One of the main problems in studies of cardiac arrhythmias is that they occur at the level of the whole organ only, while in most of the cases only single cell experiments can be performed. Due to these limitations alternative approaches such as mathematical modeling are of great interest. From mathematical point of view excitation of the heart is described by a system of non-linear parabolic PDEs of the reaction diffusion type with anisotropic diffusion operator.  Cardiac arrhythmias correspond to the solutions of these equations in form of 2D or 3D vortices characterized by their filaments.

In  my talk I   will present a basic introduction to cardiac modeling and mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias and briefly report on main directions of our research, such as development of virtual human heart model. I will report on   study of  organization of ventricular fibrillation due to dynamical instabilities in cardiac tissue, fibrosis and  heterogeneity. I will also report on current approaches to study contraction of the heart.

For my papers please visit:Here