Cs. Henriquez et Aa. Papazoglou, USING COMPUTER-MODELS TO UNDERSTAND THE ROLES OF TISSUE STRUCTURE ANDMEMBRANE DYNAMICS IN ARRHYTHMOGENESIS, Proceedings of the IEEE, 84(3), 1996, pp. 334-354
The merging of hypotheses and techniques from physics, mathematics, bi
omedical engineering, cardiology, and computer science is helping to f
orm increasingly more realistic computer models of the heart. These mo
dels complement experimental and clinical studies that seek to elucida
te the mechanisms of arrhythmogenesis and improve pharmacological and
electrical therapies. This paper reviews the current state of the art
of computer models for investigating normal and abnormal conducting in
cardiac muscle. A brief introduction to the mathematical foundations
of continuous (monodomain and bidomain) and discrete tissue structure
models and to ionic current based and FitzHugh-Nagumo membrane models
is presented. The paper summarizes some of the recent contributions in
validating tissue structure models, modeling unidirectional block and
reentry in a 1-D loop, and applying generic spiral wave theory to car
diac arrhythmias.