Cardiac Tissue Modeling
The CLA has pursued collaborative work with the School
of Biomedical Engineering at UT Health Science Center at Memphis. This
research effort includes experimental work and computational modeling
to address Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD). Most of the cardiac arrests that
lead to SCD are due to a dangerously fast heartbeat and/or chaotic electric
activity known as ventricular tachycardia and fibrillation respectively.
Another life threatening situation is when the heart beats dangerously
slow, a condition known as bradycardia. Modeling the cardiac electrical
activity and the defibrillation process has become important for understanding
and predicting heart failure due to different abnormalities in the cardiac
tissue. A Beowulf cluster of workstations was used to simulate the action
potential propagation. The action potential indicates depolarization
changes due to differences in ion concentrations, which in turn causes
muscle contractions and thus the heartbeat.
 The figure shows results for simulations of the action
potential. Each curve represents the change of the membrane potential
with time for one-dimensional modeling by use of an existing, Duke
University program. To obtain physiologically meaningful electrical
propagation results, typically 10-mi-crometer resolution is required
over distances of millimeters to centimeter.
Previous numerical investigations, lead
by Dr. Jack Buchanan at Memphis, have been adapted and modified by a
CLA doctoral student in physics to accomplish simulations with the
new Argonne National Laboratory, Mississippi State University (ANL/MSU)
libraries for parallel, cluster computations.
Principal Investigator: C. Parigger
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