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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Effect of Scar Development on Fast Electrophysiological Models of the Human Heart: In-Silico Study on Atlas-Based Virtual Populations

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The main goal of this work is to study the effect of scar development in the electrophysiological function of the human left ventricle by statistically analyzing large-scale simulation data including hypertrophic and dilated hearts. Electrophysiological simulations are obtained by solving the classical Eikonal equation in both the ventricular tissue and a customized Purkinje system. This Purkinje system is obtained assuming a geodesic rule to connect different Purkinje-myocardial junctions into a tree-like structure. Infarction shape and function is modeled with taking into account the occlusion in coronary arteries. Infarct, core and border zones of the scar are estimated by calculating blood diffusion in the region of occlusion. Three use cases are studied: no infarction, infarction due to one occlusion; infarction due to two occlusions. The electrophysiological simulations are run on a large atlas-based virtual population composed by 125 left ventricular geometries with known correspondences, derived from a Point Distribution Model of the left ventricle, as well as in 14 dilated and 20 hypertrophic real cases. The obtained results demonstrate a substantial effect of the scar characteristics in electrophysiological function of the heart, being this effect more relevant on the dilated hearts than in the hypertrophic cases. In particular, dilated cases had a more delayed activation than hypertrophic ones.