Discrete Mechanical Modeling of Mechanoelectrical Feedback in Cardiac Tissue: Novel Mechanisms of Spiral Wave Initiation

Abstract

Discrete mechanical modeling offers an attractive alternative to continuum mechanics approaches in studies of finite elastic deformations of cardiac tissue. However, discrete mechanical approaches are not widely used in cardiac modeling. We discuss applications of discrete mechanical modeling, and review our work on the study of the effect of mechano-electrical feedback (MEF) on the process of spiral wave formation in cardiac tissue. MEF is the effect of the deformation of cardiac tissue on its excitation processes. It has been shown that MEF can cause cardiac arrhythmias, which are often underpinned by spiral waves of excitation. We show that MEF substantially affects the process of spiral wave initiation and discuss several new mechanisms which we found using our discrete mechanical approach. Overall, we illustrate the value of discrete mechanical modeling to study MEF in cardiac tissue.