The main body of the work presented in this book was written in June and July 1982 (and partially rewritten in 1984) in an attempt to get the academic title “Dr.”. The strain of reorganizing the diverse computergroups of the University Hospital of Utrecht in the Netherlands, “incompatibilité d’humeurs” and a prolonged illness followed by my dismissal early in 1986 made that goal unreachable. No experiments were performed by me except in one case. The “work” consisted of designing, programming and using a signal analysis program with digitized cardiac electrograms of dogs and humans as input. The programminhg was made possible by a grant from the Netherlands Heart Foundation. The cardioelectrograms of the dogs were made available by Dr. A.N.E. Zimmerman of the Department of Cardiology of the State University of Utrecht and those of the human patients by Dr. N. van Hemel of St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein in the Netherlands. As the results from the signal analysis contradicted popular believes about ventricular fibrillation, a mathematical model of heartcell interaction was created which showed the same type of signals during “fibrillation” as a fibrillating heart. The original model needed a Cyber supercomputer, but now a PC-version is available.
In 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1988 the preliminary results were presented and discussed at congresses:
Signal Analysis of Ventricular Fibrillation
J.N.Herbschleb, R.M.Heethaar, I. v.d. Tweel, A.N.E.Zimmerman, F.L.Meijler
Computers in Cardiology, pp 49-54. Long Beach, Ca: IEEE Computer Soc. 1979
Frequency Analysis of the ECG before and during Ventricular Fibrillation
J.N. Herbschleb, R.M. Heethaar, I. van der Tweel, F.L.Meijler
Computers in Cardiology, pp 365-368. Long Beach, Ca: IEEE Computer Soc. 1980
A Model of Ventricular Fibrillation Based upon Signal Analysis of Cardiac Electrograms
J.N. Herbschleb, R.M. Heethaar, I. van der Tweel, F.L. Meijler
Biological Engineering Society, London, March 1980
The Apparent Repetition Frequency of Ventricular Fibrillation
J.N. Herbschleb, I. van der Tweel, F.L.Meijler
Computers in Cardiology, pp 249-252. Long Beach, Ca: IEEE Computer Soc. 1982
The Illusion of Travelling Wavefronts during Ventricular Fibrillation
J.N. Herbschleb, I. van der Tweel, F.L.Meijler
Circulation, Vol. 68, Supp III, October, 1983
The Illusion of Travelling Wavefronts during Ventricular Fibrillation
J.N. Herbschleb, I. van der Tweel, F.L.Meijler
Proceedings 25th Dutch Federation Meeting, Nijmegen, April 1984
Simulation of Cyclisation of Element Arrays
Han Herbschleb
USER1 September 1988, SCS, San Diego Cal.
Recently (November 2024) I discovered that ChatGPT considered me alone as the person who described ventricular fibrillation as a non-linear process, so I decided to publish upon my own account and responsibility all unpublished material, updated with relevant literature since 1988. All mistakes are mine and no blame whatsoever should fall upon any distinguished Dutch cardiologist, hospital or university. Without the technical help from Winy Schalke this would be impossible.
Secarias, August 2025
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