Dynamics and control of cardiac excitable media
The heart muscle is an excitable medium in which rotating spiral and scroll waves underlie life-threatening arrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation. Our work established that curved tissue boundaries act as wave-nucleation sites under electric fields — the mechanistic basis for low-energy defibrillation using many weak pulses instead of one strong shock — and contributed phase-based methods for unpinning spiral waves and interpreting complex fibrillation dynamics.
Related studies characterized spatiotemporal chaos and restitution in cardiac tissue, connected molecular changes to macroscopic arrhythmic phenotypes, and used elastomechanical models to interpret imaging of scroll waves during ongoing fibrillation.
This direction continues through ongoing collaborations, including work with experimentalists at the Technical University of Munich on genetic models of arrhythmia susceptibility.
Selected publications
Arrhythmia mechanism and dynamics in a humanized mouse model of inherited cardiomyopathy due to phospholamban R14del mutation
N. Raad, P. Bittihn, M. Cacheux, D. Jeong, Z. Ilkan, D. Ceholski, E. Kohlbrenner, L. Zhang, C.-L. Cai, E. G. Kranias, R. J. Hajjar, F. Stillitano, F. G. Akar
Circulation 144, 441 (2021)
Electromechanical vortex filaments during cardiac fibrillation
J. Christoph, M. Chebbok, C. Richter, J. Schröder-Schetelig, P. Bittihn, S. Stein, I. Uzelac, F. H. Fenton, G. Hasenfuß, R. F. Gilmour Jr., S. Luther
Nature 555, 667 (2018)
Emergent dynamics of spatio-temporal chaos in a heterogeneous excitable medium
P. Bittihn, S. Berg, U. Parlitz, S. Luther
Chaos 27, 093931 (2017)
Complex restitution behavior and reentry in a cardiac tissue model for neonatal mice
A. Mayer, P. Bittihn, S. Luther
Physiological Reports 5, e13449 (2017)
Scanning and resetting the phase of a pinned spiral wave using periodic far field pulses
T. K. Shajahan, S. Berg, S. Luther, V. Krinski, P. Bittihn
New Journal of Physics 18, 043012 (2016)
Complex Structure and Dynamics of the Heart
P. Bittihn
Springer International Publishing (Springer Theses), ISBN 978-3-319-12231-1 (2015)
Negative curvature boundaries as wave emitting sites for the control of biological excitable media
P. Bittihn, M. Hörning, S. Luther
Physical Review Letters 109, 118106 (2012)
Low-energy control of electrical turbulence in the heart
S. Luther, F. H. Fenton, B. G. Kornreich, A. Squires, P. Bittihn, D. Hornung, M. Zabel, J. Flanders, A. Gladuli, L. Campoy, E. M. Cherry, G. Luther, G. Hasenfuss, V. I. Krinsky, A. Pumir, R. F. Gilmour Jr., E. Bodenschatz
Nature 475, 235 (2011)
SAP97 and dystrophin macromolecular complexes determine two pools of cardiac sodium channels Nav1.5 in cardiomyocytes
S. Petitprez, A. F. Zmoos, J. Ogrodnik, E. Balse, N. Raad, S. El-Haou, M. Albesa, P. Bittihn, S. Luther, S. E. Lehnart, S. N. Hatem, A. Coulombe, H. Abriel
Circulation Research 108 (2011)
Understanding and predicting the response of pinned vortices to periodic electric far-field stimuli
A. Behrend, P. Bittihn, S. Luther
Biomedical Engineering 55 (2010)
Predicting unpinning success rates for a pinned spiral in an excitable medium
A. Behrend, P. Bittihn, S. Luther
Computing in Cardiology 37, 345 (2010)
Fast parallel simulations of excitable media dynamics on multicore processors and graphics processing units
S. Berg, P. Bittihn, S. Luther, U. Parlitz
Proceedings of the 6th ESGCO (2010)
Phase-resolved analysis of the susceptibility of pinned spiral waves to far-field pacing in a two-dimensional model of excitable media
P. Bittihn, A. Squires, G. Luther, E. Bodenschatz, V. Krinsky, U. Parlitz, S. Luther
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 368, 2221 (2010)
Far field pacing supersedes anti-tachycardia pacing in a generic model of excitable media
P. Bittihn, G. Luther, E. Bodenschatz, V. Krinsky, U. Parlitz, S. Luther
New Journal of Physics 10, 103012 (2008)