Cardiac Electrophysiology Using LS-DYNA®

Heart disease is among the leading causes of death in the Western world; hence, a deeper understanding of cardiac functioning will provide important insights for engineers and clinicians in treating cardiac pathologies. However, the heart also offers a significant set of unique challenges due to its extraordinary complexity. In this respect, some recent efforts have been made to be able to model the multiphysics of the heart using LS-DYNA. The model starts with electrophysiology (EP) which simulates the propagation of the cell transmembrane potential in the heart. This electrical potential triggers the onset of cardiac muscle contraction, which then results in the pumping of the blood to the various organs in the body. The EP/mechanical model can be coupled with a Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) model to study the clinically relevant blood flow parameters as well as valves or cardiac devices. This paper concentrates on the EP part of the model. Other papers in this conference will present the mechanical and FSI parts. Different propagation models, called “mono-domain” or “bi-domain”, which couple the diffusion of the potential along the walls of the heart with ionic equations describing the exchanges between the inner and the outer parts of the cells have been implemented. These models were first benchmarked against published results obtained from other EP research codes on a simple cuboid heart tissue model. More recently, we also performed benchmarks proposed by the FDA against analytical solutions. Other features of the EP solver will also be presented such as coupling between the tissue and a surrounding bath, coupling between mono and bi-domain in the same model, and coupling of the mono/bi domain models with a Purkinje Network. Finally, multi-physics simulations with the EP coupled with mechanical deformation and FSI for the blood flow will be presented. These models include arteries and valves for a realistic model of a ventricular pump.