Cardiac Electrophysiology Meshfree Modeling through the Mixed Collocation Method

Abstract: We present the meshfree Mixed Collocation Method (MCM) to solve the monodomain model for numerical simulation of cardiac electrophysiology. We apply MCM to simulate cardiac electrical propagation in 2D tissue sheets and 3D tissue slabs as well as in realistic large-scale biventricular anatomies. Capitalizing on the meshfree property of MCM, we introduce an immersed grid approach for automated generation of nodes in the modeled cardiac domains. We demonstrate that MCM solutions are in agreement with FEM solutions, thus confirming their suitability for simulation of cardiac electrophysiology both in healthy and disease conditions, such as left-bundle-branch block (LBBB) and myocardial infarction. Despite the fact that the computational time for MCM calculations is longer than for FEM, its efficiency in dealing with domains presenting irregularity, nonlinearity and discontinuity make MCM a promising alternative for heart's electrical investigations.