Study of conduction, block and reflection at the excitable tissues boundary in terms of the interval model of action potential

TL;DR

This paper introduces an axiomatic one-dimensional model to analyze conduction, block, and reflection phenomena at boundaries of excitable tissues, providing insights into cardiac arrhythmias and potential mechanisms for complex heart rate patterns.

Contribution

It presents a novel functional parameter-based model that explains how wave propagation, block, and reflection occur at tissue boundaries, advancing understanding of arrhythmogenic mechanisms.

Findings

Propagation can involve block or multiplex reflection.

Block and reflection are unidirectional and mutually exclusive.

Rules for wave transmission at boundaries enable new arrhythmia analysis methods.

Abstract

Some mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias can be presented as a composition of elementary acts of block and reflection on the contacts of homogeneous areas of the conducting tissue. For study this phenomena we use an axiomatic one-dimensional model of interaction of cells of excitable tissue. The model has four functional parameters that determine the functional states durations of the cell. We show that the cells of a homogeneous excitable tissue, depending on the ratio of the durations of the functional intervals, can operate in the mode of solitary waves conduction or in one of three modes of selfgeneration. It is proved that the propagation of a solitary wave through the boundary of homogeneous conducting tissues can be accompanied by a block or multiplex reflection. Block and reflection are unidirectional phenomena, and there are not compatible on the same boundary. Systematized rules of transmitting, block and reflection waves at the boundary of homogeneous conducting tissues open up new possibilities for design mechanisms of generation and analyzing complex heart rate patterns.