Understand and analyzing APD alternans

Loading...
Thumbnail Image

Persistent link to this item

Statistics
View Statistics

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Title

Understand and analyzing APD alternans

Published Date

2015-10

Publisher

Type

Thesis or Dissertation

Abstract

A beat-to-beat alternation in the action potential duration (APD) of myocytes, i.e. alternans, is believed to be a direct precursor of ventricular fibrillation in the whole heart. A common approach for the prediction of alternans is to construct the restitution curve, which is the nonlinear functional relationship between the APD and the preceding diastolic interval (DI). It was proposed that alternans appears when the magnitude of the slope of the restitution curve exceeds one, known as the restitution hypothesis. In this thesis we aim at understanding the spatio-temporal formation of alternans. Our goal is threefold. First we show, in silico with periodic pacing, that APD and calcium alternans develops locally in a small region before spreading to the rest of the domain and that the slope of the restitution curve for cells in the said small region is different than the restitution curve of cells which exhibit alternans at a later time. These results are in agreement with experimental data. The restitution hypothesis was derived under the assumption of periodic stimulation, when there is a dependence of the DI on the immediate preceding APD (i.e. feedback). However, under physiological conditions, the heart rate exhibits substantial variations in time, known as heart rate variability (HRV). Our second goal is to investigate the role of HRV in the alternans formation in isolated cardiac myocytes using numerical simulations of an ionic model of the cardiac action potential. We use two different pacing protocols: a periodic pacing protocol with feedback and a protocol without feedback and show that when HRV is incorporated in the periodic pacing protocol, it facilitates alternans formation in the isolated cell. Furthermore we show that the magnitude of alternans does not change significantly. In the case of the pacing protocol without feedback, alternans formation is prevented, even in the presence of HRV. Lastly, we derive a probabilistic model that incorporates HRV in a restitution curve. We show that this model conserves probability and that it has eigenvalue \lambda=1 for all parameters and eigenvalue \lambda=-1 under certain conditions. We derive a numerical scheme that conserves probability and present numerical results using a simple restitution curve.

Description

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. October 2015. Major: Mathematics. Advisors: Yoichiro Mori, Alena Talkachova. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 58 pages.

Related to

Replaces

License

Collections

Series/Report Number

Funding information

Isbn identifier

Doi identifier

Previously Published Citation

Suggested citation

McIntyre, Stephen. (2015). Understand and analyzing APD alternans. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/175691.

Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.