Key result
Reaction-diffusion heart model efficiently simulates pathological heart-pacemaker interactions, requiring ~5 seconds per simulated second.
Why the study?
The authors sought to develop a reaction-diffusion heart model for closed-loop evaluation of heart-pacemaker interaction and to provide a hardware setup for implementing the closed-loop system.
A novel reaction-diffusion heart model provides a flexible and computationally efficient framework for the closed-loop assessment of cardiac pacemakers.
Premature for clinical use; extends efficient in silico pacemaker-heart modeling but leaves human validation open.
The purpose of this manuscript is to develop a reaction-diffusion heart model for closed-loop evaluation of heart-pacemaker interaction, and to provide a hardware setup for the implementation of the closed-loop system. The heart model, implemented on a workstation, is based on the cardiac monodomain formulation and a phenomenological model of cardiac cells, which we fitted to the electrophysiological properties of the different cardiac tissues. We modelled the pacemaker as a timed automaton, deployed on an Arduino 2 board. The Arduino and the workstation communicate through a PCI acquisition board. Additionally, we developed a graphical user interface for easy handling of the framework. The myocyte model resembles the electrophysiological properties of atrial and ventricular tissue. The heart model reproduces healthy activation sequence and proved to be computationally efficient (i.e., 1 s simulation requires about 5 s). Furthermore, we successfully simulated the interaction between heart and pacemaker models in three well-known pathological contexts. Our results showed that the PDE formulation is appropriate for the simulation in closed-loop. While computationally more expensive, a PDE model is more flexible and allows to represent more complex scenarios than timed or hybrid automata. Furthermore, users can interact more easily with the framework thanks to the graphical representation of the spatiotemporal evolution of the membrane potentials. By representing the heart as a reaction-diffusion model, the proposed closed-loop system provides a novel and promising framework for the assessment of cardiac pacemakers.
No takes yet. Share an insight, caveat, or question.
Biasi et al. (2022) studied Heart-pacemaker interaction. Reaction-diffusion heart model vs. Timed or hybrid automata was evaluated on Simulation of heart-pacemaker interaction and computational efficiency. A reaction-diffusion heart model successfully simulated heart-pacemaker interactions in three pathological contexts, proving computationally efficient (1 s simulation requires about 5 s).
Synapse has enriched 5 closely related papers on similar clinical questions. Consider them for comparative context: