Dispersion of cardiac action potential duration and the initiation of re-entry: A computational study

BACKGROUND: The initiation of re-entrant cardiac arrhythmias is associated with increased dispersion of repolarisation, but the details are difficult to investigate either experimentally or clinically. We used a computational model of cardiac tissue to study systematically the association between action potential duration (APD) dispersion and susceptibility to re-entry. METHODS: We simulated a 60 × 60 mm 2 D sheet of cardiac ventricular tissue using the Luo-Rudy phase 1 model, with maximal conductance of the K+ channel gKmax set to 0.004 mS mm-2. Within the central 40 × 40 mm region we introduced square regions with prolonged APD by reducing gKmax to between 0.001 and 0.003 mS mm-2. We varied (i) the spatial scale of these regions, (ii) the magnitude of gKmax in these regions, and (iii) cell-to-cell coupling. RESULTS: Changing spatial scale from 5 to 20 mm increased APD dispersion from 49 to 102 ms, and the susceptible window from 31 to 86 ms. Decreasing gKmax in regions with prolonged APD from 0.003 to 0.001 mS mm-2 increased APD dispersion from 22 to 70 ms, and the susceptible window from