This computational study provides a mathematical modeling framework using finite element methods to simulate cardiac action potential dynamics and pseudo-ECGs, which may help in understanding arrhythmia precursors like alternans.
Supports computational modeling of cardiac alternans; hypothesis-generating and requires validation before clinical translation.
In this paper, we are interested in the spatio-temporal dynamics of the transmembrane potential in paced isotropic and anisotropic cardiac tissues. In particular, we observe a specific precursor of cardiac arrhythmias that is the presence of alternans in the action potential duration. The underlying mathematical model consists of a reaction–diffusion system describing the propagation of the electric potential and the nonlinear interaction with ionic gating variables. Either conforming piecewise continuous finite elements or a finite volume-element scheme are employed for the spatial discretization of all fields, whereas operator splitting strategies of first and second order are used for the time integration. We also describe an efficient mechanism to compute pseudo-ECG signals, and we analyze restitution curves and alternans patterns for physiological and pathological cardiac rhythms.
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Dupraz et al. (2014) studied this question.
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