Simulation Of Action Potential Propagation In Myocardial Tissue

Heart disease, cancer and diabetes are the three major threats to human being’s health nowadays. Cardiovascular disease harms the most in these three. According to data publiced by WHO, the number of deaths caused by heart disease reached one-third of the total number of deaths every year, which means heart disease is a serious threat to human being’s health. Therefore, it is significante to study cardiac electrophysiology and pathology. Being the vitalest organ in body, heart is hardly acquired experimental material. In order to diagnose and treat heart disease better, researchers have been trying to simulate the action of human heart with computer. Virtual heart has been the hot topic of international research cooprations for a period, and it has countable academic value and social value. Virtual heart can simulate the activities of vivo heart, and do noninvasive pre-diagnosis. Besides that, virtual heart can also help researchers study drugs which could treat heart disease. This thesis will focus on the simulation of action potential propagation inside myocardiac tissue.This thesis contains the following parts:first, study the principle of action potentials of one single myocardial cell. After acquisition of single myocardial cell’s action potential model, diffusion tensor is taken into account to rebuild the process of action potential propagation through myocardial cells. Then, this thesis analyses the safety of electrical conductivity, and gives safety factor to describe this conductivity, with the algorithm well designed together. At last, this research uses the data acquired from the action potential propagation model calculated the ventricular components of ECG, which could be called Pseudo ECG.With the principle and algorithm well studied this thesis design and implemente an action potential propagation system of myocardial cells using VTK and MFC. This simulation platform can rebuild the action potential propagation process and output the results. At the same time, it is able to calculate the safety factors of each cell. After function test of this system, this thesis simulates Left Ventricular Hypertrophy with this system. The pseudo ECG result of simulation of LVH meets the clinical diagnosis standard.At the end of this thesis, the prospects of this simulation research are given from several aspects, for example pathological research, drug research, medical teaching and further simulation and so on.