Abstract
As mentioned earlier, the bidomain system is currently the standard mathematical model of cardiac electrophysiology. This system is nowroutinely solved and provides valuable insights into the conduction of electrical signals in cardiac tissue. However, the model has one glaring limitation: The cardiomyocyte is nowhere to be found in the model, since the extracellular space, the intracellular space and the cell membrane are all assumed to be everywhere in the computational domain. The cell was lost in homogenization! There is a tremendous advantage to this because the model becomes much simpler and thus solvable for the whole human heart. And it works! But the downside is of course that the cell is the essential building block of the tissue and leaving it out of the model has consequences. For instance, it becomes impossible to investigate the detailed dynamics of the electrochemical processes in the vicinity of a small collection of cells.
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Horgmo Jæger, K., Tveito, A. (2023). Re-Introducing the Cell: The Extracellular-Membrane-Intracellular (EMI) Model. In: Differential Equations for Studies in Computational Electrophysiology. Simula SpringerBriefs on Computing(), vol 14. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30852-9_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30852-9_11
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