Researcher : Shin Inada
Affiliation : Professor, Department of Medical Engineering, Faculty of Health Sciences, Morinomiya University of Medical Sciences
 
Abstract : Cardiac arrhythmias are related to abnormal electrical excitation propagation in the heart. Especially, ventricular arrhythmia may lead to sudden cardiac death. However, it is not fully understood how abnormal electrical excitation propagation affects and contributes to initiate and maintenance of ventricular arrhythmias. One of the methods to investigate the mechanisms of initiation and maintenance of the arrhythmia is to simulate electrophysiological phenomena in the heart. In our study, we constructed large scale and anatomically-detailed heart models including approximately 20 million units. Simulations are conducted with SX-ACE supercomputer at the Cybermedia Center. Our simulations suggest that abnormality of electrical excitation propagation in the right ventricular outflow tract contribute to develop and maintenance of ventricular arrhythmia. We believe that computer simulation is one of the powerful tools to analyze complicated electrical activity of the heart and find new method to treat heart diseases such as arrhythmias.