Electrophysiological Cardiac Modeling: A Review.

Cardiac electrophysiological modeling in conjunction with experimental and clinical findings has contributed to better understanding of electrophysiological phenomena in various species. As our knowledge on underlying electrical, mechanical, and chemical processes has improved over time, mathematical models of the cardiac electrophysiology have become more realistic and detailed. These models have provided a testbed for various hypotheses and conditions that may not be easy to implement experimentally. In addition to the limitations in experimentally validating various scenarios implemented by the models, one of the major obstacles for these models is computational complexity. However, the ever-increasing computational power of supercomputers facilitates the clinical application of cardiac electrophysiological models. The potential clinical applications include testing and predicting effects of pharmaceutical agents and performing patient-specific ablation and defibrillation. A review of studies involving these models and their major findings are provided.