Finding Type and Location of the Source of Cardiac Arrhythmias from the Averaged Flow Velocity Field Using the Determinant-trace Method

Life threatening cardiac arrhythmias result from abnormal propagation of nonlinear electrical excitation waves in the heart. Finding the locations of the sources of these waves remains a challenging problem. This is mainly due to the low spatial resolution of electrode recordings of these waves. Also, these recordings are subjected to noise. In this paper, we develop a different approach: the AFV-DT method based on an averaged flow velocity (AFV) technique adopted from the analysis of optical flows and the determinant-trace (DT) method used for vector field analysis of dynamical systems. This method can find the location and determine all important types of sources found in excitable media such as focal activity, spiral waves, and waves rotating around obstacles. We test this method on in silico data of various wave excitation patterns obtained using the Luo-Rudy model for cardiac tissue. We show that the method works well for data with low spatial resolutions (up to 8×8) and is stable against noise. Finally, we apply it to two clinical cases and show that it can correctly identify the arrhythmia type and location. We discuss further steps on the development and improvement of this approach. © 2021 American Physical Society. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants No. 12075203 and No. 11975194, and research at Sechenov University was financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation within the framework of state support for the creation and development of World-Class Research Centers “Digital biodesign and personalized healthcare” (Grant No. 075-15-2020-926).