@misc{12015,
  keywords = {Conference},
  author = {Bernardo de Oliveira and Samuel Wall and Joakim Sundnes},
  title = {Impact of Mechanical Deformation on Conduction Velocity of Cardiac Tissue},
  abstract = {Impact of mechanical deformation on conduction velocity of cardiac tissue The heart is an electromechanical pump responsible of circulating blood in the body. The contraction of the heart is initiated by an electrical wave which spreads through the tissue. This stimulus triggers a chain of reactions that generates active force and consequently contraction, the so-called excitation-contraction coupling. However, there are several feedback loops that enable mechanical deformation to regulate the electrical activity, commonly referred to as mechano-electric feedback. Some examples of these mechanisms are deformation dependent conductivities, length and tension dependent binding rates, and stretch-activation channels, among others. The relevance of each of these mechanisms and the relationships between them are still poorly understood and need to be further investigated. Computational models that account both excitation-contraction and mechano-electric feedback are called strongly coupled models. These models are very complex and have already demonstrated to be an important tool to test new hypothesis and enhance understanding. Studies have investigated the relations between mechanical deformation and changes on electrical conduction velocity on mammalian ventricles. Some models try to mimic this effect by including deformation dependent conductivity, but, there is no detailed experimental data to support these assumptions. In this work a strongly coupled cardiac electromechanics simulation framework was developed, based on bidomain equations and large deformation theory. The simulations were used to compare different approaches and develop a model capable of better representing the dependency of conduction velocity on mechanical deformation that was reported in recent experimental studies.},
  year = {2012},
  journal = {World Congress on Computational Mechanics},
}