Kirsten ten Tusscher first of all made a model that described the electrical behaviour of individual human heart muscle cells. She demonstrated that the behaviour of this model corresponded well with results from experiments on human heart cells. The source code of this cell model is freely available on Internet.
The researcher then used her new model to simulate the behaviour of 13.5 million individual grid points, which together form the anatomy of a human heart. As the model is extremely large and requires a considerable amount of calculating power, she used the TERAS supercomputer of the SARA and a mini-Beowulf cluster in her own department. With this she studied the behaviour of electrical wave patterns during certain rhythm disorders in the human heart.
Heart rhythm disorders are abnormalities in the timing, sequence and coordination of how the heart muscle contracts. These vary in seriousness from palpitations though to disorders that are fatal within minutes. Heart rhythm disorders are one of the most frequent causes of death.
Ten Tusscher focused on two rhythm disorders. In ventricular tachycardia, the heart ventricles contract more frequently than normal. Less blood flows out of the ventricles and the supply of oxygen to the body is reduced. In ventricular fibrillation, the ventricles no longer contract coherently. Due to the reduced pumping action, almost no blood leaves the ventricles. As a result, the body hardly receives any more oxygen and death ensues within minutes.
Spiral-shaped electrical waves rotating at a high frequency can result in a more rapid contraction of the heart. Ventricular fibrillation is ca
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Contact: Sonja Knols
press@nwo.nl
31-70-344-0826
Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research
16-Dec-2004