Abstract
A variety of computer models had been proposed so as to simulate the electric phenomena in a human heart. All these models are composed of numerous “units”. Since the excitation is assumed to propagate step by step to the adjacent units in a specific time, it is difficult to deal with anisotropic and inhomogeneous propagation. In order to overcome these difficulty, we introduce here a new model in which a heart is divided into tetrahedral elements. Characteristics of the myocardium such as directional dependence of the conduction velocity and the action potential waveform are assigned to each vertexes of the tetrahedra as a few parameters. Being interpolated, these parameters are specified all over the heart. In this way, the anisotropic and inhomogeneous propagation as well as the spatial dependence of the action potential waveform can be taken into account. It is also possible to evaluate the influences of the anisotropy in electric conductivity on the EMF source.
