Simulating Cardiac Electrophysiology in Complex Geometries

Boyce Griffith, New York University

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The mechanisms responsible for producing and maintaining lethal cardiac arrhythmias have long been the focus of intense study, but these mechanisms are still not well understood. One difficulty is that experimental data is typically limited to two-dimensional measurements taken from a collection of electrodes on the surface of extracted heart tissue. Computer simulation can provide a means for studying both the normal and diseased heart, providing detailed spatial and temporal data which may not be easily obtained by experiment and potentially leading to a better understanding of complicated cardiac electrical dynamics.

We are developing implicit and spatially adaptive numerical methods and parallel computational software to better account for the complex fiber architecture of the heart in numerical simulations of cardiac electrical activity. An overview of the modeling methodology will be presented as well as simulation results.

Abstract Author(s): Boyce E. Griffith