lifex-fiber: an open tool for myofibers generation in cardiac computational models

Abstract

Background Modeling the whole cardiac function involves the solution of several complex multi-physics and multi-scale models that are highly computationally demanding, which call for simpler yet accurate, high-performance computational tools. Despite the efforts made by several research groups, no software for whole-heart fully-coupled cardiac simulations in the scientific community has reached full maturity yet. Results In this work we present $$\texttt {life}^{\texttt {x}}$$ life x -fiber, an innovative tool for the generation of myocardial fibers based on Laplace-Dirichlet Rule-Based Methods, which are the essential building blocks for modeling the electrophysiological, mechanical and electromechanical cardiac function, from single-chamber to whole-heart simulations. $$\texttt {life}^{\texttt {x}}$$ life x -fiber is the first publicly released module for cardiac simulations based on $$\texttt {life}^{\texttt {x}}$$ life x , an open-source, high-performance Finite Element solver for multi-physics, multi-scale and multi-domain problems developed in the framework of the iHEART project, which aims at making in silico experiments easily reproducible and accessible to a wide community of users, including those with a background in medicine or bio-engineering. Conclusions The tool presented in this document is intended to provide the scientific community with a computational tool that incorporates general state of the art models and solvers for simulating the cardiac function within a high-performance framework that exposes a user- and developer-friendly interface. This report comes with an extensive technical and mathematical documentation to welcome new users to the core structure of $$\texttt {life}^{\texttt {x}}$$ life x -fiber and to provide them with a possible approach to include the generated cardiac fibers into more sophisticated computational pipelines. In the near future, more modules will be successively published either as pre-compiled binaries for systems or as open source software.

Modeling isovolumetric phases in cardiac flows by an Augmented Resistive Immersed Implicit Surface method

“…We carry out our numerical simulations in life x , 85,86 * a high‐performance C++ FE library developed within the iHEART project, ** mainly focused on cardiac simulations and based on the deal.II finite element core 87–89 . The source code of the life x module for hemodynamics simulations, referred to as life x ‐cfd, has been recently released 90,91…”