Prevention of spiral wave formation and breakup bycontmlof intracellular calcium dynamics

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Recent theoretical studies using computer simulation has suggested that intercellular Can dynamics plays an important role in the initiation and maintenance of spiral wave reentry, which is a principal mechanism underlying ventricular tachyarrhythmias such as ventricular fibrillation/tachycardia. In this study, we have developed 2 types of dual optical mapping systems to record action potential/intracellular Ca^2+ fluorescence images simultaneously from isolated heart preparations of experimental animals: the first system has a dicrotic mirror to separate fluorescence signals and 2 high-speed CMOS video cameras, and the second system includes a high-speed switching apparatus of excitation LEDs combined with rotating optical filters fir fluorescence. A series of fluorescence images for action potentials and intracellular Ca^2+ were recorded simultaneously from the left ventricular epicardial myocardium Langendorff-perfused rabbit hearts with reasonable spatiotemporal resolution. In the firmer system, however, an additional development of image processing software to adjust the dual fluorescence images will be required, and in the latter system, an improvement of time resolution (20 frames/s) will be needed for precise analysis of relationship between action potentials and intracellular Ca^2+ dynamics to elucidate the roles of intracellular Ca^2+ dynamics on spiral wave reentry.