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{Manani:2016:10.1103/PhysRevE.94.042401,
author = {Manani, K and Christensen, K and Peters, NICHOLAS},
doi = {10.1103/PhysRevE.94.042401},
journal = {Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics},
title = {Myocardial architecture and patient variability in clinical patterns of atrial fibrillation},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.94.042401},
volume = {94},
year = {2016}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Atrial fibrillation (AF) increases the risk of stroke by a factor of 4–5 and is the most common abnormal heart rhythm. The progression of AF with age, from short self-terminating episodes to persistence, varies between individuals and is poorly understood. An inability to understand and predict variation in AF progression has resulted in less patient-specific therapy. Likewise, it has been a challenge to relate the microstructural features of heart muscle tissue (myocardial architecture) with the emergent temporal clinical patterns of AF. We use a simple model of activation wave-front propagation on an anisotropic structure, mimicking heart muscle tissue, to show how variation in AF behavior arises naturally from microstructural differences between individuals. We show that the stochastic nature of progressive transversal uncoupling of muscle strands (e.g., due to fibrosis or gap junctional remodeling), as occurs with age, results in variability in AF episode onset time, frequency, duration, burden, and progression between individuals. This is consistent with clinical observations. The uncoupling of muscle strands can cause critical architectural patterns in the myocardium. These critical patterns anchor microreentrant wave fronts and thereby trigger AF. It is the number of local critical patterns of uncoupling as opposed to global uncoupling that determines AF progression. This insight may eventually lead to patient-specific therapy when it becomes possible to observe the cellular structure of a patient's heart.
AU  - Manani,K
AU  - Christensen,K
AU  - Peters,NICHOLAS
DO  - 10.1103/PhysRevE.94.042401
PY  - 2016///
SN  - 1063-651X
TI  - Myocardial architecture and patient variability in clinical patterns of atrial fibrillation
T2  - Physical Review E - Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.94.042401
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/40216
VL  - 94
ER  -
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