Coupled personalization of cardiac electrophysiology models for prediction of ischaemic ventricular tachycardia

Abstract

In order to translate the important progress in cardiac electrophysiology modelling of the last decades into clinical applications, there is a requirement to make macroscopic models that can be used for the planning and performance of the clinical procedures. This requires model personalization, i.e. estimation of patient-specific model parameters and computations compatible with clinical constraints. Simplified macroscopic models can allow a rapid estimation of the tissue conductivity, but are often unreliable to predict arrhythmias. Conversely, complex biophysical models are more complete and have mechanisms of arrhythmogenesis and arrhythmia sustainibility, but are computationally expensive and their predictions at the organ scale still have to be validated. We present a coupled personalization framework that combines the power of the two kinds of models while keeping the computational complexity tractable. A simple eikonal model is used to estimate the conductivity parameters, which are then used to set the parameters of a biophysical model, the Mitchell-Schaeffer (MS) model. Additional parameters related to action potential duration restitution curves for the tissue are further estimated for the MS model. This framework is applied to a clinical dataset derived from a hybrid X-ray/magnetic resonance imaging and non-contact mapping procedure on a patient with heart failure. This personalized MS model is then used to perform an in silico simulation of a ventricular tachycardia (VT) stimulation protocol to predict the induction of VT. This proof of concept opens up possibilities of using VT induction modelling in order to both assess the risk of VT for a given patient and also to plan a potential subsequent radio-frequency ablation strategy to treat VT.