Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 927279, 10 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/927279
Research Article

A Fully Coupled Model for Electromechanics of the Heart

Henian Xia,1 Kwai Wong,2 and Xiaopeng Zhao1

1Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
2Joint Institute for Computational Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831, USA

Received 20 June 2012; Revised 7 September 2012; Accepted 8 September 2012

Academic Editor: Ling Xia

Copyright © 2012 Henian Xia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

We present a fully coupled electromechanical model of the heart. The model integrates cardiac electrophysiology and cardiac mechanics through excitation-induced contraction and deformation-induced current. Numerical schemes based on finite element were implemented in a supercomputer. Numerical examples were presented using a thin cardiac tissue and a dog ventricle with realistic geometry. Performance of the parallel simulation scheme was studied. The model provides a useful tool to understand cardiovascular dynamics.