Beating heart modeling and simulation

Most previous electrical heart models were static, not beating ones. In this paper, we present a method of beating heart modeling and ECG simulation. The key step is to construct an electromechanical heart model. The cardiac excitation propagation was simulated by electrical heart model, and the resulted cardiac active forces were used to calculate the ventricular wall motion based on a mechanical heart model. Thus the source-field point relative position changes during cardiac systole and diastole can be obtained, and are employed to calculate body surface ECG based on the electrical heart-torso model. The results showed that compared with simulated ECG based on the static electrical heart model the simulated ECG based on beating heart model is more accordant with clinical recorded ECG, especially for ST segment and T wave of V1-V6 lead ECG. For slight-degree myocardial ischemia, the ST segment and T wave changes can be observed from the simulated ECG based on beating heart model, while the ST segment and T wave of simulated ECG based on static heart model is almost unchanged compared with normal ECG.