Optical mapping of excitation waves in the light-sensitive immortalised cell line of cardiomyocytes

This paper demonstrates the investigation of the properties of spiral waves that occur in the immortalised excitable cell line HL-1 transfected with light-sensitive ion channel ChR2-YFP. Due to light-induced modulation of excitability, we succeed in demonstrating the induced shift of the spiral wave core and its wave front discontinuity with subsequent formation of two more spiral waves. Besides, cell culture electrode stimulation demonstrates spiral wave displacement to the boundary by circular excitation higher frequency waves. Also, this method demonstrates the circular waves fronts discontinuity on the homogeneous area of a culture monolayer at frequencies higher than the critical one.