Abstract
Species-specific computer models of the heart are a novel powerful tool in studies of life-threatening cardiac arrhythmias. Here, we develop such a model aimed at studying infarction injury in a rat heart, the most common experimental system to investigate the effects of myocardial damage. We updated the Gattoni2016 cellular ionic model by fitting its parameters to experimental data using a population modeling approach. Using four selected cellular models, we studied 2D spiral wave dynamics and found that they include meandering and break-up. Then, using an anatomically realistic ventricular geometry and fiber orientation in the rat heart, we built a model with a post-infarction scar to study the electrophysiological effects of myocardial damage. A post-infarction scar was simulated as an inexcitable obstacle surrounded by a border zone with modified cardiomyocyte properties. For cellular models, we studied the rotation of scroll waves and found that, depending on the model, we can observe different types of dynamics: anchoring, self-termination or stable rotation of the scroll wave. The observed arrhythmia characteristics coincide with those measured in the experiment. The developed model can be used to study arrhythmia in rat hearts with myocardial damage from ischemia reperfusion and to examine the possible arrhythmogenic effects of various experimental interventions.
Highlights
The contraction of the heart is controlled by propagating non-linear waves of electrical excitation
It is seen that the models reproduce typical triangular shapes of rat cardiomyocyte action potentials at every pacing rate
The rationale for this study was that many experimental studies of ischemia and infarction injury are performed in the rat heart and anatomical modeling of these processes can be a helpful addition to these studies
Summary
The contraction of the heart is controlled by propagating non-linear waves of electrical excitation. Myocardial infarction is an acute condition characterized by local cardiomyocyte necrosis due to an insufficient regional oxygen supply. This lack of oxygen is a result of ischemia, i.e., a restricted blood supply to the myocardial tissue. Acute and long-term consequences of these two processes are widely studied in animal models of myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury [1,2,3,4]. Rats are the most commonly used laboratory animal for assessing ischemia-reperfusion injury in experiments They are used to study the mechanisms of post-infarction pathology and to develop approaches reducing adverse cardiac events following ischemia-reperfusion injury in the myocardium [5,6,7]. Animal cardiac models are mainly used to support physiological experiments and to predict and study processes which cannot be examined experimentally
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