Atrial fibrillation is the most prevalent form of cardiac arrhythmia, affecting up to 6 million people in the U.S. alone. Common treatments for severe forms of the erratic beating phenomenon are controversial, and guided by detection methods that are not yet standardized or fully refined. But new research from a diverse group of cross-disciplinary scientists, published this week in the journal Chaos, offers a computational approach to understanding the important factors involved in measuring cardiac excitation waves.