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Updated: Jul 27, 2026

Patient-specific Modeling of the Heart: Estimation of Ventricular Fiber Orientations
Published on: January 8, 2013
Electrical turbulence in three-dimensional heart muscle
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721.
Abstract:
Rotors or vortex action potentials with a diameter of about 1 centimeter and a rotation period of about 0.1 second occur in normal myocardium just before transition to fibrillation, a disorderly pattern of action potential propagation. Numerical models and corresponding mathematical analysis have recently suggested candidate mechanisms, all two-dimensional, for this transition from periodic electrical activity to something resembling turbulence. However, comparably recent experiments unanimously show that rotors, and the spiral waves they radiate, remain stably periodic in two-dimensional myocardium. This seeming paradox suggests a transition mediated through disorderly dynamics of the electrical vortex in three dimensions, as a "vortex filament."
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