Patterns in Excitable Media

Book excerpt: Excitable media comprise a class of models for a wide range of physical, chemical, and biological systems that exhibit spontaneous formation of spatial patterns. Patterns in Excitable Media: Genesis, Dynamics, and Control covers recent developments in the interdisciplinary field of dynamics and control of patterns in nonlinear biological systems described by excitable media models. Using examples of many real-life systems, it explores the impact of pattern dynamics on the structural and functional heterogeneities in the system. The book also discusses low-amplitude control schemes for eliminating patterns from an excitable medium, such as life-threatening cardiac arrhythmia. Codes for numerical simulation are provided in the appendix.