Electrical Signals in a Heart

Application ID: 981


Modeling the electrical activity in cardiac tissue is an important step in understanding the patterns of contractions and dilations in the heart. The heart produces rhythmic electrical pulses, which trigger the mechanical contractions of the muscle. A number of heart conditions involve an elevated risk of re-entry of the signals. This means that the normal steady pulse is disturbed, a severe and acute condition which is often referred to as arrhythmia.

Two mathematical models describing different aspects of electrical signal propagation in cardiac tissue are presented here: the FitzHugh-Nagumo equations and the Ginzburg-Landau equations, both of which are solved on the same geometry.

This model is kindly provided by Prof. Simonetta Filippi and Dr. Christian Cherubini from University Campus Biomedico di Roma, Italy.

This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products: