acknowledgement

The work presented in this paper was originally directed by Dr Ramesh M. Gulrajani, who died unexpectedly before this paper was drafted. We gratefully dedicate this paper to the memory of Dr Gulrajani.

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Paper in conference proceedings

context

A more comprehensive version of this paper was published in IEEE Trans Biomed Eng, December 2006.

abstract

A bidomain reaction-diffusion model of the human heart was developed and potentials resulting from normal depolarization and repolarization were compared with results from a compatible monodomain model. Comparisons were made for an empty isolated heart and for a heart with fluid-filled ventricles. Both sinus rhythm and ectopic activation were simulated. The model took 2 days on 32 processors to simulate a complete cardiac cycle. Differences between monodomain and bidomain results were very small, even for the extracellular potentials which, for the monodomain model, were computed with a high-resolution forward model. Electrograms computed with monodomain and bidomain models were visually indistinguishable. We conclude that, in the absence of applied currents, propagating action potentials on the scale of a human heart can be studied with a monodomain model.

funding

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The work of M. Potse was supported in part by FRSQ, Québec, and in part by The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). Computational resources for this work were provided by the Réseau québécois de calcul de haute performance (RQCHP).