Finite-element simulation of myocardial electrical excitation

Based on a single-domain model of myocardial conduction, isotropic and anisotropic finite element models of the myocardium are developed allowing excitation wave propagation to be studied. The Aliev-Panfilov phenomenological equations were used as the relations between the transmembrane current and the transmembrane potential. Interaction of an additional source of initial excitation with an excitation wave that passed and the spread of the excitation wave are studied using heart tomograms. A numerical solution is obtained using a splitting algorithm that allows the nonlinear boundary-value problem to be reduced to a sequence of simpler problems: ordinary differential equations and linear boundary-value problems in partial derivatives.