Parameter sensitivity and tuning in cardiac myocyte models

Armen Kherlopian, Cornell University

Photo of Armen Kherlopian

Cardiac arrhythmia is the disruption of the normal electrical rhythm of the heart and is a leading cause of mortality around the world. To study aspects of arrhythmogenesis, mathematical models of cardiac myocytes and tissues have been effectively employed to investigate cardiac electrodynamics. However, among individual myocytes there is great phenotypic variability that is dependent on factors such as source location in the heart, genetic variation, and even different experimental protocols. Thus, established models for cardiac myocytes, which are based on experimental data acquired for tightly constrained situations, are often untuned to a particular phenomenon under investigation. First, we present results exploring model sensitivity to maximal ionic conductance variations. Second, we outline a genetic algorithm based approach for tuning model parameters to account for a wide range of cardiac myocyte behavior.

Abstract Author(s): Armen R. Kherlopian and David Christini