Imperial College London
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ProfessorKimChristensen

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics

Professor of Theoretical Physics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7574k.christensen Website

 
 
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Assistant

 

Mrs Carolyn Dale +44 (0)20 7594 7579

 
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Location

 

812Blackett LaboratorySouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Falkenberg:2019:10.1103/PhysRevE.100.062406,
author = {Falkenberg, McGillivray M and Ford, A and Li, A and Lawrence, R and Ciacci, A and Peters, N and Christensen, K},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevE.100.062406},
journal = {Physical Review E},
title = {Unified mechanism of local drivers in a percolation model of atrial fibrillation},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.062406},
volume = {100},
year = {2019}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - The mechanisms of atrial fibrillation (AF) are poorly understood, resulting in disappointing success rates of ablative treatment. Different mechanisms defined largely by different atrial activation patterns have been proposed and, arguably, this dispute has slowed the progress of AF research. Recent clinical evidence suggests a unifying mechanism of local drivers based on sustained re-entrant circuits in the complex atrial architecture. Here, we present a percolation inspired computational model showing spontaneous emergence of AF that strongly supports, and gives a theoretical explanation for, the clinically observed diversity of activation. We show that the difference in surface activation patterns is a direct consequence of the thickness of the discrete network of heart muscle cells through which electrical signals percolate to reach the imaged surface. The model naturally follows the clinical spectrum of AF spanning sinus rhythm, paroxysmal and persistent AF as the decoupling of myocardial cells results in the lattice approaching the percolation threshold. This allows the model to make the novel prediction that for paroxysmal AF, re-entrant circuits emerge near the endocardium, but in persistent AF they emerge deeper in the bulk of the atrial wall. If experimentally verified, this may go towards explaining the lowering ablation success rate as AF becomes more persistent.
AU  - Falkenberg,McGillivray M
AU  - Ford,A
AU  - Li,A
AU  - Lawrence,R
AU  - Ciacci,A
AU  - Peters,N
AU  - Christensen,K
DO  - 10.1103/PhysRevE.100.062406
PY  - 2019///
SN  - 2470-0045
TI  - Unified mechanism of local drivers in a percolation model of atrial fibrillation
T2  - Physical Review E
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.062406
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/74548
VL  - 100
ER  -
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