Cardiac Modelling for Pathophysiology Research and Clinical Applications. The Need for an Automated Pipeline

A flexible pipeline for construction of computer models for electrophysiology simulation is presented. It allows the construction of 3D FEM models from clinical images with little user interaction. The processing pipeline allows to segment a patient-specific heart geometry from a scan data set, mesh it, and include the necessary functional structures to build a com- putational model. This structures include approximated fiber orientation and generic fast conduction system. The pipeline is expected to be used to construct models for study heart electro- physiology with special emphasis in cardiac resynchronization therapy in the context of the euHeart project. This framework will allow processing cases to perform clinical in a systematic and fast way.

[1]  J. Ross,et al.  Fiber Orientation in the Canine Left Ventricle during Diastole and Systole , 1969, Circulation research.

[2]  D. Durrer,et al.  Total Excitation of the Isolated Human Heart , 1970, Circulation.

[3]  R. Barr,et al.  Computer simulations of activation in an anatomically based model of the human ventricular conduction system , 1991, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering.

[4]  Alejandro F. Frangi,et al.  Automatic construction of multiple-object three-dimensional statistical shape models: application to cardiac modeling , 2002, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[5]  G Plank,et al.  Computational tools for modeling electrical activity in cardiac tissue. , 2003, Journal of electrocardiology.

[6]  K H W J Ten Tusscher,et al.  Cell model for efficient simulation of wave propagation in human ventricular tissue under normal and pathological conditions , 2006, Physics in medicine and biology.

[7]  Vuk Milisic,et al.  Analysis of the fiber architecture of the heart by quantitative polarized light microscopy. Accuracy, limitations and contribution to the study of the fiber architecture of the ventricles during fetal and neonatal life. , 2007, European journal of cardio-thoracic surgery : official journal of the European Association for Cardio-thoracic Surgery.

[8]  Olaf Dössel,et al.  Computer model for the optimization of AV and VV delay in cardiac resynchronization therapy , 2007, Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing.

[9]  Roy C. P. Kerckhoffs,et al.  Cardiac resynchronization: insight from experimental and computational models. , 2008, Progress in biophysics and molecular biology.

[10]  Pras Pathmanathan,et al.  Chaste: using agile programming techniques to develop computational biology software , 2008, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[11]  Olivier Ecabert,et al.  Automatic Model-Based Segmentation of the Heart in CT Images , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[12]  Simon R. Arridge,et al.  Model-Based Imaging of Cardiac Apparent Conductivity and Local Conduction Velocity for Diagnosis and Planning of Therapy , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

[13]  A. Panfilov,et al.  Modelling of the ventricular conduction system. , 2008, Progress in biophysics and molecular biology.

[14]  Alejandro F. Frangi,et al.  The Purkinje System and Cardiac Geometry: Assessing Their Influence on the Paced Heart , 2009, FIMH.