Arne van Hunnik

Post doc

Dr Arne van Hunnik studied medical biology with a specialisation of zoology at the Hogeschool Utrecht, The Netherlands. After his graduation, he started a position as a technician at the Department of Physiology at the Maastricht University. In the research groups of Prof. Prinzen and Prof. Allessie he specialised in large animal models covering a large range of specialties in the field of cardiology, e.g. electrophysiology, hemodynamics and pacing.

Arne van Hunnik became fascinated by the complexity of atrial conduction patterns during atrial fibrillation. Throughout the years, he was involved in the development of automated analysis. Furthermore, he was strongly involved unravelling the role of complex conduction patterns in relation to the stability of atrial fibrillation. He obtained his PhD in 2019, which focussed on the dynamical properties of electrical conduction on the heart during atrial fibrillation. To study this, he developed a method based on recurrence plots that allows the investigation of both short- and long-term properties of conduction patterns. Additionally, he studied the effect of antiarrhythmic drugs on these conduction properties.  

He is currently focussed on finding an improved antiarrhythmic drug strategy to terminate atrial fibrillation. New strategies can be found by targeting 'newly' discovered ion channels or by combining existing antiarrhythmic drugs. Furthermore, he investigates the transformation from stable to (drug-induced) unstable atrial fibrillation as this may give unique insights mechanisms of atrial fibrillation maintaining mechanisms.

To obtain this information he predominantly uses data obtained from goat model of atrial fibrillation but also includes computer models of atrial electrophysiology where possible.