Modelo matemático com parâmetros que dependem da discretização: aplicação ao estudo de fenômenos de propagação discreta em meios excitáveis

Abstract

The spatio-temporal patterns formations are observed in chemical and biological pro-cesses. Although biochemical systems are highly heterogeneous, homogenized continuum approaches formed by partial differential equations have been employed frequently. These approaches are usually justified by the difference scales between the characteristic spatial size of the patterns. Under some conditions of the medium, for instance, under weak coupling between cardiac cells, discrete models are more adequate. On the other hand discrete models may be less manageable, for instance, in terms of mesh generation, com-pared to the continuum models. Here we study a mathematical model to approach the discreteness which permits the computer implementation on non-uniform meshes. The model is cast as a partial differential equation but with a parameter that depends on the discretization mesh. Therefore we refer to it as a mathematical model with parameters dependent of discretization. We validate the approach in a generic excitable media that simulates three different phenomena in 1D: the propagation of action potential in car-diac tissue, the propation of the action potentialin filaments of axons wrapped by myelin sheaths, and the propagation of the activator/inhibitor in chemical microemulsions. For the 2D case we develop a version to this approach in microemulsions where it was possible to reproduce spiral waves with weak coupling of the medium.