Introducing fibrosis

Question

Is it possible to introduce the fibrosis (in my case, I want to apply ablation like application of scars in the tissue, so conductivity=0 in this zone) after some time from the start of the simulation and not immediately (at time t=0)?

Answer 1

You can save a statefile and then load it in a simulation in which you change to tissue conductivities in certain regions or change parameters of the ionic model. What won't work is to change the ionic model itself (e.g. from myocyte to fibroblast).

Comments

Thank you for your answer. My point is that I was thinking to do in this way:  
-start a simulation to induce AFib, store the last position of the rotor tip (Phase Singularity, PS) ;
-pass the value of the rotor tip to a second simulation, in order to make it starts from the same point in which the first simulation ends and then introduce ablation.
So, my question is: Is there a way to save the coordinates of the position of the last PS of the first simulation in order to pass it as input (in the code indicated by 'center' in model.induceReentry.PSD) to the second simulation?

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To do that you'd have to extend the carputils script.

However, this seems more complicated than necessary to me. If you store the full statefile and then load it again for your second simulation, you don't have to reinduce but can simply continue the simulation exactly from where you stopped.

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thank you, I have tried with your strategy! Is it possible that some regions of the ablated zone remain still conductive, even if slowly? Because my ablation site is not totally black, but seems like the signal is still slowly propagating inside it. I think it is due to region tagging.

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Yes, probably the case because you load the state before ablation with the transmembrane voltage at that time which is likely not resting membrane voltage and then reduce the conductivity drastically, so that it also cannot diffuse.
If this is a problem for your setting, I'd suggest increasing the conductivity in the ablation region a bit so that it still cannot be excited but the "remaining depolarization" can diffuse to other regions

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Perfect, thank you so much!