Efficient, cell-based simulations of cardiac electrophysiology; The Kirchhoff Network Model (KNM)

Abstract

Mathematical models based on homogenized representation of cardiac tissue have greatly improved our understanding of cardiac electrophysiology. However, these models are too coarse to investigate the dynamics at the level of the myocytes since the cells are not present in homogenized models. Recently, fine scale models have been proposed to allow for cell-level resolution of the dynamics, but these models are too computationally expensive to be used in applications like whole heart simulations of large animals. To address this issue, we propose a model that balances computational demands and physiological accuracy. The model is founded on Kirchhoff’s current law, and represents every myocyte in the tissue. This allows specific properties to be assigned to individual cardiomyocytes, and other cell types like fibroblasts can be added to the model in an accurate manner while keeping the computing efforts reasonable.