abstract

The first mathematical heart model consisted of a single dipole source. It is still used. More recent models couple millions of elements, each represented by a detailed membrane model. We pushed this further by making a bidomain reaction-diffusion model of the human heart with over 50 million elements. In this presentation we discuss how to make such a large bidomain system converge, and what are the useful applications of this large and resource-hungry model.

support

Computational resources for this work were provided by the Réseau québécois de calcul de haute performance (RQCHP). We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Research Center of Sacré-Coeur Hospital, Montréal, Québec, Canada; the Interuniversity Cardiology Institute of the Netherlands (ICIN); and The Netherlands Heart Foundation (NHS) grant 2005B092.