bidomain model

Up to one-third of patients undergoing cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) are nonresponders. Multipoint bicathodic and cathodic-anodal left ventricle (LV) stimulations could overcome this clinical challenge, but their effectiveness remains controversial. Here we evaluate the performance of such stimulations through both in vivo and in silico experiments, the latter based on computer electromechanical modeling. Seven patients, all candidates for CRT, received a quadripolar LV lead. Four stimulations were tested: right ventricular (RVS); conventional single point biventricular (S-BS); multipoint biventricular bicathodic (CC-BS) and multipoint biventricular cathodic-anodal (CA-BS)...

In patients with atrial fibrillation, intracardiac electrogram signal amplitude is known to decrease with increased structural tissue remodeling, referred to as fibrosis. In addition to the isolation of the pulmonary veins, fibrotic sites are considered a suitable target for catheter ablation. However, it remains an open challenge to find fibrotic areas and to differentiate their density and transmurality. This study aims to identify the volume fraction and transmurality of fibrosis in the atrial substrate...

Accurate values for the six cardiac bidomain conductivities are crucial for meaningful computational studies of conduction in cardiac tissue, and are yet to be determined by experimental means. Although previous studies have proposed an approach using a multi-electrode array to measure potentials, from which the conductivities can be determined, it has been found that the conductivities cannot be retrieved consistently when the noise in the potentials varies. This paper presents a protocol, which not only has been shown to retrieve the conductivities to a reasonable accuracy, but does so under the presence of a more appropriate additive Gaussian noise model, while using fewer computational resources...

Cardiac digital twins (Cardiac Digital Twin (CDT)s) of human electrophysiology (Electrophysiology (EP)) are digital replicas of patient hearts derived from clinical data that match like-for-like all available clinical observations. Due to their inherent predictive potential, CDTs show high promise as a complementary modality aiding in clinical decision making and also in the cost-effective, safe and ethical testing of novel EP device therapies. However, current workflows for both the anatomical and functional twinning phases within CDT generation, referring to the inference of model anatomy and parameters from clinical data, are not sufficiently efficient, robust and accurate for advanced clinical and industrial applications...

Electrocardiographic imaging (ECGI) based detection of myocardial ischemia requires an accurate formulation of the source model, which includes a relationship between extracellular and transmembrane potentials (TMPs). In this study, we used high-resolution intramural experimental recordings and forward modeling to examine the relationship between extracellular potentials and TMPs during myocardial ischemia. We measured extracellular electro-grams from intramural plunge needle arrays during seven controlled ischemia episodes in an animal model...

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the accuracy of personalized numerical simulations of the electrical activity in human ventricles by comparing simulated electrocardiograms (ECGs) with real patients' ECGs and analyzing the sensitivity of the model output to variations in the model parameters. We used standard 12-lead ECGs and up to 224 unipolar body-surface ECGs to record three patients with cardiac resynchronization therapy devices and three patients with focal ventricular tachycardia. Patient-tailored geometrical models of the ventricles, atria, large vessels, liver, and spine were created using computed tomography data...

Modelling the electrical activity of the heart is an important tool for understanding electrical function in various diseases and conduction disorders. Clearly, for model results to be useful, it is necessary to have accurate inputs for the models, in particular the commonly used bidomain model. However, there are only three sets of four experimentally determined conductivity values for cardiac ventricular tissue and these are inconsistent, were measured around 40 years ago, often produce different results in simulations and do not fully represent the three-dimensional anisotropic nature of cardiac tissue...

Cellular and tissue level bioelectrical activity was simulated over structurally realistic 3D interstitial cell of Cajal (ICC) networks reconstructed from confocal images of a wild type (WT) mouse model with a normal ICC distribution and a Spry4 knockout (KO) mouse model with a mild ICC hyperplasia. First, the ICC pixels within the confocal images were segmented. Then, the segmented images were visually inspected and the 3D surface mesh of the ICC tissue network was created from the 90 slices spanning the myenteric plexus ICC network...

A new inducible artificial metalloenzyme was obtained by covalent attachment of a Mn(III)-tetraphenylporphyrin to the artificial bidomain repeat protein (A3A3')Y26C. The biohybrid was characterized by MALDI-ToF MS, circular dichroism and UV-Vis spectroscopies. Its peroxidase activity was tested as well as its monooxygenase activity for the oxidation of thioanisole into sulfoxide by H 2 O 2 . Catalytic tests were performed on the original scaffold and with  several co-catalysts a) additional imidazole, b) a specific αRep bA3-2 that induces the opening of the (A3A3') interdomain region and c) a αRep bA3-2 bearing a His6-Tag (His6-bA3-2), and the best activity was obtained with His6-bA3-2...

In this paper, we investigate the dynamics of a neuron-glia cell system and the underlying mechanism for the occurrence of seizures. For our mathematical and numerical investigation of the cell model we will use bifurcation analysis and some computational methods. It turns out that an increase of the potassium concentration in the reservoir is one trigger for seizures and is related to a torus bifurcation. In addition, we will study potassium dynamics of the model by considering a reduced version and we will show how both mechanisms are linked to each other...

Transverse and axial tubules (TATS) are an essential ingredient of the excitation-contraction machinery that allow the effective coupling of L-type Calcium Channels (LCC) and ryanodine receptors (RyR2). They form a regular network in ventricular cells, while their presence in atrial myocytes is variable regionally and among animal species We have studied the effect of variations in the TAT network using a bidomain computational model of an atrial myocyte with variable density of tubules. At each z-line the t-tubule length is obtained from an exponential distribution, with a given mean penetration length...

Introduction: Myocardial ischemia is an early clinical indicator of several underlying cardiac pathologies, including coronary artery disease, Takatsobu cardiomyopathy, and coronary artery dissection. Significant progress has been made in computing body-surface potentials from cardiac sources by solving the forward problem of electrocardiography. However, the lack of in vivo studies to validate such computations from ischemic sources has limited the translational potential of such models...

This paper is devoted to the homogenization of a nonlinear transmission problem stated in a two-phase domain. We consider a system of linear diffusion equations defined in a periodic domain consisting of two disjoint phases that are both connected sets separated by a thin interface. Depending on the field variables, at the interface, nonlinear conditions are imposed to describe interface reactions. In the variational setting of the problem, we prove the homogenization theorem and a bidomain averaged model. The periodic unfolding technique is used to obtain the residual error estimate with a first-order corrector...

Mathematical modelling and numerical simulation in cardiac electrophysiology have already been studied extensively. However, there is a clear lack of techniques and methodologies for studying the propagation of action potential in a heart with structural defects. In this paper we present a modified version of the bidomain model, derived using homogenisation techniques with the assumption of existence of diffusive inclusions in the cardiac tissue. The diffusive inclusions represent regions without electrically active myocytes, for example, fat, fibrosis, etc...

The properties of cardiac muscle are anisotropic, and the degree of anisotropy may be different in the intracellular and extracellular spaces. In the electrical bidomain model, such "unequal anisotropy ratios" of the conductivity lead to unanticipated behavior. In the mechanical bidomain model, unequal anisotropy ratios of the mechanical moduli might also result in unanticipated behavior. In this study, mathematical modeling based on the mechanical bidomain model is used to calculate the distribution of mechanotransduction in cardiac tissue when it is stretched...

Recent advances in the development of non-invasive cardiac imaging technologies have made it possible to measure longitudinal and circumferential strains at a high spatial resolution also at intramural level. Local mechanical activation times derived from these strains can be used as non-invasive estimates of electrical activation, in order to determine e.g. the origin of premature ectopic beats during focal arrhythmias or the pathway of reentrant circuits. The aim of this work is to assess the reliability of mechanical activation time markers derived from longitudinal and circumferential strains, denoted by ATell and ATecc , respectively, by means of three-dimensional cardiac electromechanical simulations...

BACKGROUND: Several studies have shown that post-stroke patients develop divergent activity in the sensorimotor areas of the affected hemisphere of the brain compared to healthy people during motor tasks. Proper mathematical models will help us understand this activity and clarify the associated underlying mechanisms. New Method. This research describes an anatomically based brain computer model in post-stroke patients. We simulate an ischemic region for arm motion using the bidomain approach...

Tissue level cardiac electrophysiology is usually modelled by the bidomain equations, or the monodomain simplification of the bidomain equations. One assumption made when deriving the bidomain equations is that both the intracellular and extracellular spaces are in electrical equilibrium. This assumption neglects the disturbance of this equilibrium in thin regions close to the cell membrane known as Debye layers. We first demonstrate that the governing equations at the cell, or microscale, level may be adapted to take account of these Debye layers with little additional complexity, provided the permittivity within the Debye layers satisfies certain conditions that are believed to be satisfied for biological cells...

Electromyography (EMG) can be used to study the behaviour of the motor neurons and thus provides insights into the physiology of the central nervous system. However, due to the high complexity of neuromuscular control, EMG signals are challenging to interpret. While the exact knowledge of the excitation patterns of a specific muscle within an in vivo experimental setting remains elusive, simulations allow to systematically investigate EMG signals in a controlled environment. Within this context, simulations can provide virtual EMG data, which, for example, can be used to validate and optimise signal analysis methods that aim to estimate the relationship between EMG signals and the output of motor neuron pools...

Cardiac ventricular tachycardia (VT) is a life-threatening arrhythmia consisting of a well organized structure of reentrant electrical excitation pathways. Understanding the generation and maintenance of the reentrant mechanisms, which lead to the onset of VT induced by premature beats in presence of infarct scar, is one of the most important issues in current electrocardiology. We investigate, by means of numerical simulations, the role of infarct scar dimension, repolarization properties and anisotropic fiber structure of scar tissue border zone (BZ) in the genesis of VT...