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Efficient numerical methods for simulating cardiac electrophysiology with cellular resolution
(2023)
The cardiac extracellular-membrane-intracellular (EMI) model enables the precise geometrical representation and resolution of aggregates of individual myocytes. As a result, it not only yields more accurate simulations of cardiac excitation compared to homogenized models but also presents the challenge of solving much larger problems. In this paper, we introduce recent advancements in three key areas: (i) the creation of artificial, yet realistic grids, (ii) efficient higher-order time stepping achieved by combining low-overhead spatial adaptivity on the algebraic level with progressive spectral deferred correction methods, and (iii) substructuring domain decomposition preconditioners tailored to address the complexities of heterogeneous problem structures. The efficiency gains of these proposed methods are demonstrated through numerical results on cardiac meshes of different sizes.
Cardiac electrograms are an important tool to study the spread of excitation waves inside the heart, which in turn underlie muscle contraction. Electrograms can be used to analyse the dynamics of these waves, e.g. in fibrotic tissue. In computational models, these analyses can be done with greater detail than during minimally invasive in vivo procedures. Whilst homogenised models have been used to study electrogram genesis, such analyses have not yet been done in cellularly resolved models. Such high resolution may be required to develop a thorough understanding of the mechanisms behind abnormal excitation patterns leading to arrhythmias. In this study, we derived electrograms from an excitation propagation simulation in the Extracellular, Membrane, Intracellular (EMI) model, which represents these three domains explicitly in the mesh. We studied the effects of the microstructural excitation dynamics on electrogram genesis and morphology. We found that electrograms are sensitive to the myocyte alignment and connectivity, which translates into micro-fractionations in the electrograms.
Multigrid methods for two-body contact problems are mostly
based on special mortar discretizations, nonlinear Gauss-Seidel
solvers, and solution-adapted coarse grid spaces. Their high
computational efficiency comes at the cost of a complex implementation
and a nonsymmetric master-slave discretization of the nonpenetration
condition. Here we investigate an alternative symmetric and
overconstrained segment-to-segment contact formulation that
allows for a simple implementation based on standard multigrid and
a symmetric treatment of contact boundaries, but leads to nonunique
multipliers. For the solution of the arising quadratic programs,
we propose augmented Lagrangian multigrid with overlapping block
Gauss-Seidel smoothers. Approximation and convergence properties are studied numerically at standard test problems.
On the Accuracy of Eikonal Approximations in Cardiac Electrophysiology in the Presence of Fibrosis
(2023)
Fibrotic tissue is one of the main risk factors for cardiac arrhythmias. It is therefore a key component in computational studies. In this work, we compare the monodomain equation to two eikonal models for cardiac electrophysiology in the presence of fibrosis. We show that discontinuities in the conductivity field, due to the presence of fibrosis, introduce a delay in the activation times. The monodomain equation and eikonal-diffusion model correctly capture these delays, contrarily to the classical eikonal equation. Importantly, a coarse space discretization of the monodomain equation amplifies these delays, even after accounting for numerical error in conduction velocity. The numerical discretization may also introduce artificial conduction blocks and hence increase propagation complexity. Therefore, some care is required when comparing eikonal models to the discretized monodomain equation.
Ray Tracing Boundary Value Problems: Simulation and SAFT Reconstruction for Ultrasonic Testing
(2016)
Spectral Deferred Correction methods for adaptive electro-mechanical coupling in cardiac simulation
(2017)
We investigate spectral deferred correction (SDC) methods for time stepping
and their interplay with spatio-temporal adaptivity, applied to the solution
of the cardiac electro-mechanical coupling model. This model consists
of the Monodomain equations, a reaction-diffusion system modeling the cardiac
bioelectrical activity, coupled with a quasi-static mechanical model describing
the contraction and relaxation of the cardiac muscle. The numerical
approximation of the cardiac electro-mechanical coupling is a challenging
multiphysics problem, because it exhibits very different spatial and temporal
scales. Therefore, spatio-temporal adaptivity is a promising approach
to reduce the computational complexity. SDC methods are simple iterative
methods for solving collocation systems. We exploit their flexibility for combining
them in various ways with spatio-temporal adaptivity. The accuracy
and computational complexity of the resulting methods are studied on some
numerical examples.