When electrical waves do not propagate coherently through the heart, a dangerous arrhythmia can form.

Due to the apparent complexity of these patterns, it is challenging to see what is going on, and to devise appropriate intervention. Especially the chaotic phase during which wave breaks form and either vanish or organise into spirals, is hard to grasp.

Recently, we found that in complex excitation patterns, special points exist: heads (end points of fronts), tails (end points of wave backs) and pivots (end points of conduction blocks). We showed that these points persist over time and space as they possess topological charge.

In our paper in Chaos, resulting from the Master’s thesis of Aaron Gobeyn, we design and implement fast algorithms for the detection of head and tail quasiparticles.

Figure reprinted from Gobeyn et al., Chaos 35, 123105 (2025), licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license