Authors:
Maria Narciso
1
;
Ana Isabel Sousa
1
;
Fernando Crivellaro
1
;
Rui Valente de Almeida
1
;
António Ferreira
2
and
Pedro Vieira
1
Affiliations:
1
FCT Nova, Caparica, Portugal
;
2
Cardiology Department, Hospital de Santa Cruz, Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Ocidental, Lisbon, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Heart Computational Model, Parallel Simulation, Cardiac Electrophysiology, Arrhythmia, CHASTE, MATLAB, Virtual Heart.
Abstract:
The propagation of electric signal in the heart is bonded to the cardiac muscle (myocardium) geometry and
condition. In this regard we aim to build a patient-specific computational model of the myocardium based on
noninvasive imaging, with the long-term goal of being used to run simulations in electrophysiology studies.
Three-dimensional (3D) Magnetic Resonance Images (MRI) were processed using MATLAB® to build a
volumetric mesh which embodies the Left Ventricle (LV) and can later be read by third party applications.
This feature was tested with the open source software CHASTE (Cancer, Heart and Soft Tissue Environment)
to solve and visualize the propagation of an excitation wave.
Furthermore, an algorithm was developed capable of defining the fibre orientation for the resulting mesh, based
on the geometry described in literature. This experiment substantiates the expectation that parallel computing
simulations of the heart maybe used, in the near future, as a monitoring and diagnost
ic tool for the assessment
of cardiac arrhythmias in clinical practice.
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