Key result
Mathematical simulations showed that epicardial and torso potentials are most sensitive to the intracellular longitudinal conductivity, which significantly affects surface potential distributions.
Why the study?
Key inputs to cardiac bidomain models, such as conductivity values, remain uncertain, creating a need to quantify how input uncertainty affects model outputs and identify the most important values to prioritize.
In computational models of cardiac ischemia, intracellular longitudinal conductivity is the most critical parameter influencing heart and torso surface potentials, highlighting it as a key target for experimental measurement.
May alter ischemia model outputs via conductivity uncertainty; leaves open need for empirical validation before clinical use.
Mathematical simulations using the bidomain model, which represents cardiac tissue as consisting of an intracellular and an extracellular space, are a key approach that can be used to improve understanding of heart conditions such as ischaemia. However, key inputs to these models, such as the bidomain conductivity values, are not known with any certainty. Since efforts are underway to measure these values, it would be useful to be able to quantify the effect on model outputs of uncertainty in these inputs, and also to determine, if possible, which are the most important values to focus on in experimental studies. Our previous work has systematically studied the sensitivity of heart surface potentials to the bidomain conductivity values, and this was performed using a half-ellipsoidal model of the left ventricle. This study uses a bi-ventricular heart in a torso model and this time looks at the sensitivity of the torso surface potentials, as well as the heart surface potentials, to various conductivity values (blood, torso and the six bidomain conductivities). We found that both epicardial and torso potentials are the most sensitive to the intracellular longitudinal (along the cardiac fibres) conductivity (gil) with more minor sensitivity to the torso conductivity, and that changes in gil have a significant effect on the surface potential distributions on both the torso and the heart.
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Johnston et al. (2021) studied Ischaemia (simulated). Bidomain conductivity values (blood, torso, and six bidomain conductivities) was evaluated on Sensitivity of torso and heart surface potentials. Mathematical simulations showed that epicardial and torso potentials are most sensitive to the intracellular longitudinal conductivity, which significantly affects surface potential distributions.
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