FPGA-in-the-Loop Simulation of Cardiac Excitation Modeling towards Real-Time Simulation

Abstract

Cardiac excitation is a fundamental mechanism within the heart’s function. One way to understand this mechanism is by using numerical modeling techniques. However, an immense amount of computational time has been required in the simulation that generally involves a large number of parameters. In this paper a simulation study of Luo Rudy Phase I (LR-I) mathematical model by using MATLAB Simulink to solve ordinary differential equations (ODEs) using field programmable gate array (FPGA) towards a real-time simulation of cardiac excitation has been presented. The FPGA could be the best solutions because it is able to provide high performance in solving higher order ODEs for real-time hardware implementation. In fact, the FPGA hardware design can be accelerated by using MATLAB Simulink HDL Coder that automates the hardware description language (HDL) code generation from designed MATLAB Simulink blocks. Furthermore, HDL designed implementation can be verified by using HDL Verifier such as co-simulation and FPGA-in-the-Loop (FIL) approaches to simulate the generated HDL code and verify the results. In this paper, results show that the LR-I cardiac excitation modeling is successfully simulated by the MATLAB Simulink and by using the HDL Coder the designed MATLAB Simulink model is successfully converted into VHDL code and verified through the FIL. These have given a positive outlook towards the FPGA hardware implementation for real-time simulation.