Anatomical modelling of cardiac arrhythmias - Studying mechanisms of ventricular fibrillation using anatomically accurate model of the human heart.

Cardiac arrhythmia called ventricular fibrillation is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in industrialized countries. Although ventricular fibrillation has been studied for well over a century, their underlying mechanisms remain largely unknown. One of the main problems in studies of cardiac arrhythmias is that they occur at the level of the whole organ only, while in most of the cases only single cell experiments can be performed. Due to these limitations alternative approaches such as mathematical modeling are of great
interest.

In my talk I will report on development of anatomically accurate model of ventricles of the human heart. Further, I will discuss several possible mechanisms of ventricular fibrillation which have been studied in our group using anatomically accurate modeling.