Beatbox - A Computer Simulation Environment for Computational Biology of the Heart

Despite over a century's study, the trigger mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias are poorly understood. Even modern experimental methods do not provide sufficient temporal and spacial resolution to trace the development of fibrillation in samples of cardiac tissue, not to mention the heart in vivo. Advances in human genetics provide information on the impact of certain genes on cellular activity, but do not explain the resultant mechanisms by which fibrillation arises. Thus, for some genetic cardiac diseases, the first presenting symptom is death. Computer simulations of electrical activity in cardiac tissue offer increasingly detailed insight into these phenomena, providing a view of cellular-level activity on the scale of a whole tissue wall. Already, advances in this field have led to developments in our understanding of heart fibrillation and sudden cardiac death and their impact is expected to increase significantly as we approach the ultimate goal of whole-heart modelling. Mod...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: BCS
• Authors: Ross McFarlane, Irina V. Biktasheva
• Keywords: BCS 2008, Cardiac, Cardiac Tissue, Cardiac Tissue Offer, Computer Science