Cardiac excitation waves that arise in heart tissues have long been an important research topic because they are related to various carcliac arrhythmia. Investigating their properties based on intact animal whole hearts is important but quite demanding and expensive. Subsequently, dissociated cardiac cell cultures have been used as an alternative. Here, we access the usefulness of cardiomyocyte cell line HL-1 in studying generic properties of cardiac waves. Spontaneous wave activities in confluent populations of HL-1 cells are monitored using a phase-contrast optical mapping system and a microelectrode array recording device. We find that high-density Cultures of HL-1 cells can Support well-defined reentries. Their conduction velocity and rotation period both increase over few days. The increasing trend of rotation period is opposite to the case of control experiments using primary cultures of mouse atrial cells. The progressive myolysis of HL-1 seems responsible for this difference. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.