Cell-to-cell mathematical modeling of arrhythmia phenomena in the heart.

In this work, we investigate deterministic mechanisms that generate and perpetuate flutter and fibrillation in the right atrium of the human heart using mathematical models and high-performance computational simulations. Using a GPU, the solutions of systems of as much as 360 000 cells of 29 variables each were distributed among the available processors to simulate a cell-to-cell electric behavior of heart tissue. Moreover, in a smaller array of 462 cells, we showed that fibrillation, fluttering, and fibrillation-to-fluttering can be modeled even by using the simplest excitable cell models including only a few variables as well as with realistic models of heart cells, simply by implementing aperiodicity and fractality to the connections network. Micro-reentries which may be identified with fibrillation of the systems can be simulated in silico experiments where emerge several self-perpetuating, colliding waves associated with non-periodic and mathematically calculated pseudo-EG. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]