Electromagnetic communication between cells through tunneling nanotubes

Structures of tunneling nanotubes (TNTs) of the circular cross-section of 50 and 200 nm and length up to 1 mm form a communication system between cells. While transport of material such as endocytic vesicles, mitochondria, proteins, cytoplasmic molecules, etc., is experimentally proven, a possible transfer of electric and electromagnetic energy across TNTs corresponding to electrotechnical processes of excitation, propagation, and amplification in cavity systems is yet in a beginning stage of research. The ideas presented in this paper are based on technical mechanisms applied to submicroscopic systems. Main features of corrugated periodic structures, electromagnetic circular waveguides, the Manley–Rowe amplification, the Fröhlich non-linear interaction of coherent electric polar vibrations, and description of cut-off frequency propagating limits in the waveguide and cavities and along periodic structures are discussed. We suggest that cell-to-cell connection with TNTs may form a unified coherent cavity system which enables simultaneity and mutual cooperation in multicellular organisms.

Parametrization of activation based cardiac electrophysiology models using bidomain model simulations

Eikonal models are useful to compute approximate solutions of cardiac excitation propagation in a computationally efficient way. In this work the underlying conduction velocities for different cell types were computed solving the classical bidomain model equations for planar wavefront propagation. It was further investigated how changes in the conductivity tensors within the bidomain model analytically correspond to changes in the conduction velocity. The error in the presence of local front curvature for the derived eikonal model parametrization were analyzed. The conduction velocity simulated based on the bidomain model was overestimated by a maximum of 10%.

Depth Attenuation Degree Based Visualization for Cardiac Ischemic Electrophysiological Feature Exploration

Although heart researches and acquirement of clinical and experimental data are progressively open to public use, cardiac biophysical functions are still not well understood. Due to the complex and fine structures of the heart, cardiac electrophysiological features of interest may be occluded when there is a necessity to demonstrate cardiac electrophysiological behaviors. To investigate cardiac abnormal electrophysiological features under the pathological condition, in this paper, we implement a human cardiac ischemic model and acquire the electrophysiological data of excitation propagation. A visualization framework is then proposed which integrates a novel depth weighted optic attenuation model into the pathological electrophysiological model. The hidden feature of interest in pathological tissue can be revealed from sophisticated overlapping biophysical information. Experiment results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method for intuitively exploring and inspecting cardiac electrophysiological activities, which is fundamental in analyzing and explaining biophysical mechanisms of cardiac functions for doctors and medical staff.