Speaking today at the Institute of Physics "Simulation and Modeling Applied to Medicine" conference in London, Dr. Richard Clayton from the University of Leeds presents an overview of the project and demonstrates how his team's physics-based understanding of the heart could lead to improved treatment.

"During a healthy heart beat a wave of electrical activity sweeps through the heart muscle, moving from the inside towards the outer surface making the heart start to contract, before dying away. During cardiac arrest this normal pattern is disturbed. The electrical activity fails to die away properly, and moves around the muscle in a turbulent pattern causing an arrhythmia known as ventricular fibrillation," explains Clayton. "Our detailed biophysical and anatomical model can simulate this activity and we can then test different pharmacological and physical treatments that could help the patient."

The simulation requires massive computing power; even using high-speed equipment, it takes 24 hours to simulate one second of heart activity.

The end result, however, is a sequence of color images of the beating heart, showing the pattern of electrical activity and enabling researchers to visualize the effects of different therapies.

"At the same time, we can simulate the electrical signals that would be detected by external monitoring devices and show how the particular state of the heart would appear in a clinical electrocardiogram trace," says Clayton.

This allows their simulation system to provide information that will assist in day-to-day care of patients who are prone to ventricular fibrillation following a heart attack.

Clayton is funded by the British Heart Foundation; the research is also supported by grants from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Medical Research Council and Royal Society, as well as Sun Microsystems

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[Contact: Dr. Richard Clayton, Dr. Alice Bows]

23-Jan-2002