Relative acceleration of orthonormal basis vectors for the geometric conduction blocks of the cardiac electric signal propagation on anisotropic curved surfaces

Abstract

Geometric conduction blocks stop cardiac electric propagation due to the shape or conductivity properties of the domain. The blocks are considered to cause many abnormal cardiac electric propagations, leading to cardiac electrophysiological pathologies, such as cardiac fibrillation and arrhythmia. Locating such multidimensional conduction blocks is challenging, particularly in a complex domain with a complex shape and strong anisotropy, such as the heart. To address this problem, we propose a novel mathematical model of the geometric conduction block using the relative acceleration adopted from space-time physics. An efficient numerical scheme for the mathematical model is also proposed to predict the unidirectional conduction block effectively, even in a complex domain. The relative acceleration in the cardiac electric propagation corresponds to the sink-source relationship between the excited (after repolarization) and excitable (before depolarization) cardiac cells, representing the geometric growth rate of the volume of metric balls. The trajectory is constructed from the wavefront of diffusion-reaction equations by aligning orthonormal basis vectors along the gradient of the action potential. Relative acceleration is computed along the propagational direction from the connection 1-form of the basis vectors. The proposed mathematical model and numerical scheme are applied to demonstrate geometric conduction blocks in two-dimensional (2D) simple curved domains with strong anisotropy.