Figure 2.

Performance of FFP. In the S region (grey), the medium exhibits excitable dynamics and supports spiral waves. (a) In the shrinking wave (SW) region (black), broken plane waves do not form spirals but shrink (called subexcitable in the work of Alonso et al. (2003)). The right and top white domains represent non-excitable dynamics: bistability and no waves, respectively. (b) The ATP domain represents the model parameters for which ATP can potentially unpin spiral waves from an obstacle of size R=3. The FFP domain (which includes the ATP region) marks the parameter combinations for which unpinning by FFP is successful, if the pulse is delivered at the right time. FFP is successful in a much larger region than ATP. An increased excitation threshold (parameter b) facilitates unpinning. (Adapted from Bittihn et al. 2008.)