No abstract

In this work, a parallel three-dimensional solver for numerical simulations in computational electrocardiology is introduced and studied. The solver is based on the anisotropic Bidomain cardiac model, consisting of a system of two degenerate parabolic reaction–diffusion equations describing the intra and extracellular potentials of the myocardial tissue. This model includes intramural fiber rotation and anisotropic conductivity coefficients that can be fully orthotropic or axially symmetric around the fiber direction. The solver also includes the simpler anisotropic Monodomain model, consisting of only one reaction–diffusion equation. These cardiac models are coupled with a membrane model for the ionic currents, consisting of a system of ordinary differential equations that can vary from the simple FitzHugh–Nagumo (FHN) model to the more complex phase-I Luo–Rudy model (LR1). The solver employs structured isoparametric Q1finite elements in space and a semi-implicit adaptive method in time. Parallelization and portability are based on the PETSc parallel library. Large-scale computations with up to O(107) unknowns have been run on parallel computers, simulating excitation and repolarization phenomena in three-dimensional domains.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

In this paper we present a macroscopic model of the excitation process in the myocardium. The composite and anisotropic structure of the cardiac tissue is represented by a bidomain, i.e. a set of two coupled anisotropic media. The model is characterized by a non linear system of two partial differential equations of parabolic and elliptic type. A singular perturbation analysis is carried out to investigate the cardiac potential field and the structure of the moving excitation wavefront. As a consequence the cardiac current sources are approximated by an oblique dipole layer structure and the motion of the wavefront is described by eikonal equations. Finally numerical simulations are carried out in order to analyze some complex phenomena related to the spreading of the wavefront, like the front-front or front-wall collision. The results yielded by the excitation model and the eikonal equations are compared.

No abstract

Adaptive numerical methods in space and time are introduced and studied for multiscale cardiac reaction-diffusion models in three dimensions. The evolution of a complete heartbeat, from the excitation to the recovery phase, is simulated with both the anisotropic Bidomain and Monodomain models, coupled with either a variant of the simple FitzHugh-Nagumo model or the more complex phase-I Luo-Rudy ionic model. The simulations are performed with the kardos library, that employs adaptive finite elements in space and adaptive linearly implicit methods in time. The numerical results show that this adaptive method successfully solves these complex cardiac reaction-diffusion models on three-dimensional domains of moderate sizes. By automatically adapting the spatial meshes and time steps to the proper scales in each phase of the heartbeat, the method accurately resolves the evolution of the intra-and extra-cellular potentials, gating variables and ion concentrations during the excitation, plateau and recovery phases.Keywords: reaction-diffusion equations, cardiac Bidomain and Monodomain models, adaptive finite elements, adaptive time integration Recent advances in contemporary cardiac electrophysiology are progressively revealing the complex multiscale structure of the bioelectrical activity of the