Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 14.4
Snapshots of the transmembrane potential field, plotted on the deformed configuration,
and fiber distribution at times
t
=
1, 40, 230, 540 ms, plotted on the undeformed configuration
14.5 Conclusions and Future Directions
The material outlined in this paper reports some recent work in modeling and nu-
merical simulation of cardiac electromechanics using the active strain approach.
Even though several physical approximations apply, recently performed compar-
isons with experimental observations by Evangelista et al. (
2011
) (in terms of tor-
sion of the left ventricle, endocardial volumes, and circumferential strains) and by
Rossi et al. (
2012
) (in terms of end-systolic normal and shear strains) suggest the
potential effectiveness of active-strain based models.
The effectiveness of an electromechanical model in capturing the key aspects of
the physiology depends on several factors. In particular, we take electric models
from a cell level and incorporate them in a force balance equation that holds at the
macroscale. Yet, it is not obvious that such an uplift between spatial scales can be
directly operated, without a suitable homogenization procedure. This is a concern
shared by all current models of cardiac electromechanics, and needs to be addressed
in further detail.
