1. Introduction

The purpose of this documentation is to better understand simulations of atrial fibrilation. For this goal cardiac cell models are run using The fenics project and Cbcbeat (python).

The development of this repository has been done in the context of SysAFib project[2] at Simula Research Laboratories [3] during summer internship 2018.

The SysAFib project at Simula aims at developing a simulation study of atrial fibrillation in the human heart.The main goal of this internship is to produce a range of test problems and associated documentation. The quality of the project will greatly benefit from such contribution, as often unexpected questions and issues arise in this test development phase. It will also allow new users to easily approach the simulation tool, promoting its dissemination in the cardiovascular modelling field.

Atrial fibrilation (AFib) is a type of supraventricular tachycardia. It is a pathological state of the heart caused by irregular heartbeat of the atria. This causes the blood not to be moved effectely to the ventricles and therefore it can lead to clots, strokes and heart failure. AFib is the most common abnormal heart rythm affecting 2% of the population in Europe and North America.

Since the mechanisms underlying AFib are poorly understood it is very helpful to use simulations based on mathematical models of the cardiac cells that will allow a better understanding of the process and eventually lead to new solutions for this pathology. [1]

In this documentation, a detailed explanation on how to install The fenics project and Cbcbeat in Macusing Docker is given. Moreover, some highlited cardiac cell models are described. It can also be found a tutorial on cbcbeat for 2 demos explaining what the code is doing from a general point of view. Furthermore, OpenCOR and ParaView visualization of the solutions are provided.

The project will be presented at VPH2018[4]